THE CATS KILLS 

T' MORRIS LONGS TRETH 




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Photograph l)y Howard Burtt 



Wai>l of Manitou 



THE CATSKILLS 



BY 

T. MORRIS LONGSTRETH 

Author of "The Adirondacks," etc. 



ILLUSTRATED WITH 

PHOTOGRAPHS AND 

MAP 



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NEW YORK 

THE CENTURY CO. 

1918 



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Copyright, 1918, by 
The Century Co. 



Published, October, 1918 



QC1 -2 1918 



©Ci. ..503657 



DEDICATED WITH LOVE 
TO 

MARTHA M. HALDEMAN 

WHOSE SYMPATHY AND ENCOURAGE- 
MENT HAVE BEEN NEVER-FAILING 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I Introductions All Round 3 

II Woodstock and the Overlook ... 15 

III Meandering by the Map 30 

IV The Wall of Manitou 40 

V Apostasy of a Cheerful Liar .... 50 

VI Natty Bumppo's View 65 

VII When Is a Waterfall? 85 

VIII That Elusive Vajst Winkle .... 95 

IX Stony Clove 115 

X A Chapter on Shoes 134 

XI Brute's Little Game 141 

XII Out Windham Way 155 

XIII The Winter Woods 175 

XIV The Northw:est Redoubt 202 

XV Big Injin and Heap Big Slide .... 210 

XVI Spring and Mr. Burroughs .... 238 

XVII Intermezzo 255 

XVIII A Rendezvous with June 260 

XIX Mount Ashokan and the Reservoir . . 266 

XX The Happy Valley 275 

XXI Beaverkill Bush 284 

XXII The Catskill Park 299 

Some Guide-Book Addenda 312 

Index 319 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 



Wall of Manitou Frontispiece / 

Map 8 

"Dark Lines of Widening Torrent" 17- 

Knapsack and Shoe-Leather 18 

A Sawkill Memory 35 

Splutterkill, Splatterkill ........ 36 

The Onti Ora 53 

Mountainside — Santa Cruz Park 54 

Natty Bumppo's View 71 

Haines' Falls 72 

Crest of the Kaaterskill 89 

Kaaterskill Falls 90 

Down the Kaaterskill Clove 107 

Profile near Palenville 108 

Plateau and Stony Clove 125 

Hunter Notch— Stony Clove 126 

The Esopus near Shandak^n 143 

Phoenicia 144 

Out Windham Way 161 

Valley of the Westkill . . ;. 162 

The Winter Woods 179 

The Wittenberg 180 

Late of Wittenberg Forest 197 

Ashokan from the Wittenberg 198 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

A Slope of Utsayantha 215 

South from Utsayantha 216 

Man-Not-Afraid-of-Company 249 

Woodchuck Lodge 250 

Stamford from Utsayantha 267 

Nearing Grand Gorge 268 

Roxbury the Rare 301 

Green Pastures 302 



THE CATSKILLS 



THE CATSKILLS 

CHAPTER 1 

INTRODUCTIONS AIX. ROUND 

THE principal, grand, and conclusive thaw 
had come late in March. There had been 
previous slight relentings of the cold, occasional 
dribblings from noontime icicles ; but winter, usu- 
ally so intermittent with us, had stuck to being 
winter for weeks at a time until Greenland's ici- 
est mountains and our less pretentious suburb had 
much in common. 

At last, however, the snows were ebbing away. 
The wealth of whiteness that the north wind had 
spent his months in amassing was being squan- 
dered by the spendthrift south in a few days. 
First the deep ruts ran with water, and soon the 
entire roads. The broad fields grew noisy with 
dark lines of widening torrent. Houses that one 
day stood beside a lake the next stood in it ; and 
from humid dawn till hazy eve an adolescent sun 
brooded upon an emerging world. It was a beau- 
tiful representation of Genesis in rehearsal. 

3 



4 THE CATSKILLS 

And after Genesis came Exodus. The abandon 
of mounting spring had kindled in me a longing 
for outdoors and the open road altogether incom- 
patible with the rigors of professional hours. No 
youngster in our school had computed more ex- 
actly than had I the interval between the moment 
in question and vacation; between the acute pres- 
ent and an abstract future. 

Outdoors the glint of yellowing willows and the 
encouragement of the song-sparrow were daily 
growing stronger. But they were confronted in- 
doors by a calendar and a Committee of Educa- 
tion. 

''Come out and be human," sang the song- 
sparrow. 

"Stay in and be educated," shouted the Com- 
mittee of Education. 

In this chorus of competitive invitation the 
Committee would have drowned out the bird if 
the quiet hand of chance had not given a signal : 
a band of itinerant measles came to visit in our 
vicinity. 

If it be so that our personality is betrayed 
by our prayers, then mine are not for publica- 
tion. For they came true. The measles — I 
hoped they would be light cases — did not abate 
their duty; nor did the Board of Health. In 
the first flush of spring, before the last drifts 
had vanished from the lee of hedges and before 



INTRODUCTIONS ALL ROUND 5 

the maple-sap would have started in the moun- 
tains, we were furloughed. We became as free 
as song-sparrows. In a twinkling of the imag- 
ination the dim blue ranges of my day-dreams 
changed to the tangible dirt of the road beneath 
my feet. Once unmoored, it had taken me little 
time to get under way. A train, a trolley, a 
ferry ; and the first of April was leading me forth 
from the Hudson-washed city of Kingston to 
tramp for a full month (measles permitting) 
through the mountains that banked ahead of me 
against the western sky. I had stout shoes on 
my feet and a stout knapsack on my back, and my 
head was filled with visions of broiled trout. 
Nothing else, except possibly the hot-cakes, mat- 
tered. To be sure, I was alone, which is not the 
best estate for highwaying; but even that condi- 
tion could not damp my spirits as I struck out 
through the mud of the late merry month of 
March. 

March had gone out like a ewe-lamb, and so had 
I. Had I not listened to the farewells of friends 
and to their prophetic qualms ! All winter mem- 
ory had been filling my eyes with pictures of 
shadowy gorges and winding woodways, with a 
full meal at the end of every proper period. The 
friends reminded me that those pictures were il- 
lusion, that spring is a sodden equinox and corn 
meal monotonous. Do not despise the dangers of 



6 THE CATSKILLS 

setting out a month ahead of convention! As I 
listened I was almost persuaded to go back on 
those beneficent measles. There was a dash of 
truth in what they said. It is quite true that 
there is no walker who has not longed sometime 
for wheels, no vagabond who would not at times 
trade all his liberty for the discomforts of home. 
Every seeker has often criticized the curiosity that 
led him forth. But he who would find must also 
seek. On that eventful morning of brilliant skies 
and buoyant airs, the rhythm of the road made me 
as forgetful of farewells as is the new-risen soul 
in Paradise of the burial service. In an hour I 
had left the little city and the Hudson well behind. 

I doubt whether the approach to the Elysian 
Fields can be more quietly beautiful than was that 
elm-lined road along which my pilgrimage led. 
To the west and to the north mountains rose per- 
pendicularly from the plain. The plain was bare, 
the mountains snow-covered, and distance en- 
dowed them with living color, a faint mother-of- 
gentian blue. They rose in conscious dignity. 
Apparently they were not concerned with making 
an impression by pinnacles or ragged edges ; they 
coveted no cheap splendors. They had taken time 
to be perfect, established, beautiful. 

Despite the clearness of the air, the mountains 
grew visibly nearer with every mile, always a 
comforting observation to any one used to the co- 



INTRODUCTIONS ALL ROUND 7 

quettish qualities of Western distances. The gen- 
eral ranges disclosed their more richly tinted val- 
leys. The gray of the leafless forest was darkened 
here and there with patches of conifer. Climbing 
a little hill beside the road, I came upon my first 
surprise of a surprising day. At my feet there 
shone a mountain lake, ice-green and without ap- 
parent end, where there had never been a lake be- 
fore. On earlier visits to the Catskills I had 
ridden through the lowlands where now sparkled 
and flared these unexpected ice-floes. Yet the set- 
ting was perfect, the lake fitted into its scene as 
magically as does Derwentwater. Along one 
edge the silver gleam of water liberated itself 
from the frozen glare of aged ice and danced in 
the sun. For miles back into the mountain-land 
the body of the lake extended, with bays winding 
between the hillocks on either side. Was the 
world still under creation's spell, I wondered? 
Then I remembered that it was the great new 
Reservoir. But in remembering the beauty of it 
grew no less. 

My itinerary was unplanned. There was still 
a week before trout might legally accept the fly. 
I had thought of wandering about the mountains 
prospecting for rich pools. But now there was a 
decision to be made. Yonder beckoned the ancient 
hills; here invited a new lake, to which — ? At 
such moments of decision the tiniest of considera- 



8 THE CATSKILLS 

tions may switch one of the contending molecules 
from pro to con and one's destiny be changed 
eternally. The consideration in this case was or- 
dinary enough. An automobile of the universal 
type stopped at the roadside. 

At first the mere stopping of the car, inasmuch 
as I did not care to ride, had no apparent bearing 
upon my future. But presently the youth who 
had been diverting himself beneath the hood called 
to me, and my attention was withdrawn from the 
impersonal attraction of the Ashokan Reservoir 
to the personal ones of the driver. Since I had 
been alone for nearly two hours, I was quite ready 
to speak with my kind. But with this young fel- 
low it was business first, and that without conver- 
sation. He said merely: 

''If you '11 hold that I '11 crank her." 

I held it and she was cranked. But she still 
sulked. Force was, as usual, of no avail with the 
female of the species. I ventured a pleasantry to 
that effect, but it fell upon ears primed only for 
the purring of the motor. So I put down my pack 
until he should ask me to do something else. 
There was something about the boy that put one 
in a mood to oblige him, and I was rather surprised 
at the car's obstinacy. He now set about engag- 
ing earnestly with the diversities of its interior. 
I had nothing to do but observe him. 

He was obviously strong. If there is any series 



INTRODUCTIONS ALL ROUND 9 

of motions better calculated to exhibit natural en- 
durance than an automobile crank in process of 
revolution, it has never been revealed to me. 
With the sun now in its zenith, I watched his ex- 
ertions with admiration. He neither began to 
melt and exude away as the unfit would have done ; 
nor did he explode in sound as the mentally un- 
governed might; nor did he even persist in per- 
forming the same deadly orbit as a merely stub- 
born ox would do. Between every few revolutions 
he got his wind by reckoning up the as yet un- 
tried combinations possible to the machinery. 

When he stood erect I saw that, despite his 
strength, he was not so very tall or powerfully 
built. He was about the age, I judged, at which 
I should have been teaching him Cicero. But I 
doubted whether he had ever heard either of Mar- 
cus Tullius or of his tongue. The buoyant health 
written over him did not speak of still hunts 
through dead phraseologies. There was grease 
on his cheek and dirt on his clothes, which were 
neither new nor patched. ''Good American 
blood," I remember thinking at the time. With 
an idleness born of the drenching sun, I watched 
him, sometimes holding things as requested, but 
never to any purpose. 

"She '11 come around all right," he said, spit- 
ting through the wheel. '*It 's what I get for try- 
ing to do without the — " He mentioned one of 



10 THE CATSKILLS 

the internal necessities, the use of which he had 
questioned. As the car was plainly subnormal 
without it, I suggested that he let me help him put 
it back. But his inventiveness was not to be so 
easily placated. 

*'Just you wait," he exclaimed, *'and we '11 
have her going without it. That is, if you have 
the time." 

*^I have four weeks," I replied, without much 
enthusiasm. He looked at me then — for the first 
time, I believe — and smiled, though ever so little. 
His eyes were fairly wide-set, and in them I fancied 
that I saw the man. It decided me upon staying. 
Looking back across vistas of conversations, jokes, 
journeyings, and mild adventure, it is hard to un- 
tangle Brute Vreeland, my friend, from the orig- 
inal stranger. But I am fairly certain that the 
beginning of our interest in each other dated from 
that glance — amused, slightly curious, but alto- 
gether amicable. ''Here 's a city fellow I don't 
quite follow," he probably said to himself. "A 
real man 's worth more than a range of moun- 
tains," I was thinking at the same time. Then, 
quite unaware of each other's thought, we turned 
to the business in hand. 

There were a great many more permutations 
of valves and things before the next cranking, and 
the despair that I customarily feel at the sight of 
a car in negative motion was held in check only by 



INTRODUCTIONS ALL ROUND 11 

the boy's own faith in ultimate success. At last 
the miracle occurred. The distraught vehicle 
gave a gurgle, gave another, came to life. In we 
got, off we flew. And then, having no more ma- 
chinery to engage him, he began to investigate me : 
"Walking far?" 

I estimated that it wouldn't be over four hun- 
dred miles in the month. 

**Four hundred miles! What in the deuce 
for? " 

**Fun and fish and freedom." 
*'This is a good enough sort of freedom for 
me," he said, patting the steering-wheel. "In a 
car you aren't tied to your feet and so many 
miles a day. You can go on and on." 

"And if you walk you are n't tied to a car and 
you can 't go on and on, " I replied. * ' That 's the 
great advantage. The walker lives in the present, 
the motorist in the future — that is, if he lives. 
Walking is — " 

"Yes, I ought to know," grinned Vreeland; 
"I only got this car yesterday. I 've lived all my 
life in sight of that set of mountains, and I 've 
never been up one of them yet. I 've often in- 
tended to, but they 're always there, kind of too 
handy. Maybe I '11 get back in them now. They 
say the roads are peach." 

The narrow ribbon of macadam along one edge 
of which we took the curves was certainly peach. 



n THE CATSKILLS 

It was indeed flawless. We were already almost 
under the eaves of the mountain, and the village of 
Woodstock lay snug and neat before us. Quite 
before I thought twice, I said, "You 'd better 
come with me. ' ' I was sorry the instant after, for 
it was sheer impulse. I did n 't want anybody, just 
then, to dictate the roads. Consequently I was re- 
lieved when he replied : 

''I 'd do it with you, but I haven't been home 
for a good while. I work down Kingston way, in 
a garage. Business is kind of slack now and I got 
a week off. We 're putting in a bath-room home. 
If it was n't for that I 'd get you to show me how 
to walk. ' ' 

*' There 's nothing like it," I said faintly. 

He stopped the car where a lane ran up to a 
white cottage surrounded by sugar maples which 
appeared to be giving sap with considerable vim. 
I declined his invitation to dinner, yet lifted my 
knapsack from the car with real regret. Instinct 
is sounder than reason, just as expletive is more 
sincere than formal speech. Although no word of 
moment had passed between us, I felt as if I were 
depriving myself of a potential comrade. Hearti- 
ness was in his handshake ; and although I tried to 
tell myself, when I had resumed my walk, that 
the country people are all alike, it did not succeed. 
I knew that I had left one who was not quite "all 
alike." If he had not snapped the golden cord of 



INTRODUCTIONS ALL ROUND 13 

education off too soon — My train of sentiment 
was snapped by a blast from an outrageous horn 
beneath my very ear. I reacted sideways to the 
roadside with great agility. ' 

**She can steal up pretty quiet for this kind of a 
car, can't she?" It was my friend again, leaning 
out of his Ford and smiling at the broad jump I 
had made. If he had not smiled I could have shot 
him. But at him, beaming, I could not glower back. 

*'Does it still go I" he asked, suddenly turned 
shy. "What you said about me walking with 
your' 

** Certainly, " I was surprised into saying. 
''What decided you?" 

''Measles. My sister 's got them." 

No wonder that he wondered at my mirth. His 
coming back had irritated me. But the reason was 
so funny that I felt irritation, dismay, everything 
vanishing in laughter. His astonishment made it 
even funnier. 

"It 's queer ma takes it so hard," he said after 
a while, " if it 's as funny as all that. ' ' 

I told him, with some effort, what the benevolent 
germs had already done for me. I also took occa- 
sion to paint for him pictures of roughing it so 
vivid that nothing might surprise him unfavorably 
on the trip, if he still felt in the mood for going. 

"It 's exploring that I 'd like," he suggested, 
when I had done my best. 



14 THE CATSKILLS 

Eemembering his mechanisms, I believed him. 
So I told him what clothes to have his mother 
throw out the window for him, and set the hour for 
the morrow's departure. Then I turned again 
toward Woodstock, richer by one traveling com- 
panion, genus homo, species American, but variety 
unknown. The adventure had begun, and it was 
but little past noon. 



CHAPTER II 

WOODSTOCK AND THE OVERLOOK 

THE village of Woodstock is the sort of charm- 
ing, delicious place that a guide-book would 
call a community, the inhabitants a town, and New 
Yorkers a spot. It is in reality a hamlet, which is 
short for hamelet, a place of little homes. And 
the hame countree never gathered together pret- 
tier cottages on its own green hills than cluster 
about the bridges over the little Sawkill or are 
sandwiched in the folds of green pastures. Sand- 
wiches, I insist, are appetizing. 

One must be very careful, however, in praising 
Woodstock to its face. Many of the inhabitants 
are artists, and whenever I suggested that I 
thought the place was pretty I was assured that I 
ought not to. I grant the defects, but if I am 
called on for proof I shall choose a day in June 
when the meadows are orange with hawk-weed 
and white with daisy, the marvelous elms by the 
Tannery Brook in full foliage, the succession of 
brook-ledges swimming with water in a leisurely 
fall before the old Riseley place — a day when the 

15 



16 THE CATSKILLS 

little white studios gleam through the trees up the 
hill, and the great protecting range of the Overlook 
looks near. I shall take the judges there on such 
a day, and if they are not deaf to the warble of 
wrens, dulled to the scent of clover, and blind to 
the play of light and shade, I shall win my case. 
Woodstock is wealthy in small change, and show- 
ers it hospitably around. 

"Woodstock, moreover, is no ordinary village 
where the one street is swamped by a surge of 
farmland and the inhabitants are moored to the 
milking-stool for life. It is a village through 
which sweep sane sturdy undercurrents of rural 
life, and, in addition, two tides of outside influ- 
ence. One tide is of art, rising to the master- 
pieces produced there by Birge Harrison. The 
other is the foam of Greenwich village fantasy. 
Wherever real artists gather the pseudo delight 
to flock. 

From the farmers I heard funny tales. A reas- 
suring thing was the amusement they seemed to 
get out of the procession of poseurs, the value they 
attached to the presence of the genuine. One fine 
old man who had followed many a furrow told me 
with glee of the era of stockingless girls, the era 
of brother's clothes on sister, the season of bobbed 
hair. He was enthusiastic about the Maverick 
festivals, the stone-quarry concerts. He had only 
kindly words for those who were in earnest about 





*^ 






Photograph by Williani F. Kriebel 

"Dark Lines of Widening Torrent 




rh..i.,^r:u>h l.v Wil 



Knapsack and Shoe-Leather 



WOODSTOCK AND THE OVERLOOK 19 

** their bit o' bnishin'." He subscribed to Mr. 
Hervey White's ''Plowshare," the Woodstock 
magazine. It was a refreshing incident, this find- 
ing a man who, in most of the other farm com- 
munities of our land, would have limited his inter- 
ests to the price of eggs or local politics, but who, 
once subject to the play of creative forces, re- 
sponded to their charm and worth- Thus once 
more was the artist justified. 

That afternoon I Iv-ckily fell in with an illus- 
trator whose circulation is in the million, one of 
the small group of kindred spirits who stay in 
Woodstock the calendar round. Truly there is 
virtue in a place where the twice lucky residents 
can pursue their professions in a veritable refuge 
of delight, and yet not lose touch with the great 
city at the other end of the river. He took me 
many miles up into the valleys, and from behind 
the wind-shield I saw mills that could have talked 
of Whigs and Tories, streams that murmured be- 
hind their veils of ice, and ever-opening valleys 
clad in a purple mist of hard-wood forest. I was 
told about Mink Hollow of unplacid fame, given a 
view of Cooper's Lake, a pond of respectable di- 
mensions. We drove by an establishment whose 
owner, evidently not hungering for calm, sought 
to relieve the unf retfulness of his domain by sign- 
posting his garden-corner, "Broadway" and 
* ' 42nd Street. ' ' He had probably flown the city to 



20 THE CATSKILLS 

escape the uproar. For us poor wingless crea- 
tures the promised land is forever where we 
are n't. And when we fly I I wonder if then am- 
bition shall taste satiety. Shall we be more rest- 
less, or will the measure of the entirety attained 
quiet us down to some solider enjoyment than mere 
flight? Ever since Columbus brewed his dreams 
over the travels of Marco Polo, we have been 
chiefly concerned with getting somewhere else. 
As we rounded turn after turn, passed lovely val- 
ley after lovely valley, I began to wonder why, on 
the morrow, I was to start off with an unknown 
youth on a speculative journey. In the Sawkill, 
in the little Beaverkill, in every silver hollow there 
were more fish and more fresh thoughts than I 
could garner up in many a moon. 

There were to be two answers. Months later I 
found one in the thrill of enjoyment I had in com- 
ing back to friends. That evening I found the 
other. Before a fragrant fire of apple boughs we 
talked late, as new acquaintance will, and discov- 
ered to each other (as new acquaintance will) 
such confidences as a year of other places or estab- 
lished friendship might not have brought forth. 
"We saw that, although we were two men of differ- 
ent ages, different businesses, and with different 
goals, we were but on different stages of the same 
old road. And, though this could not have much 
of a discovery to either, yet there was great com- 



WOODSTOCK AND THE OVERLOOK 21 

fort in the checking up of mutual reminiscence, in 
the uncovering of common pitfalls. 

This warming to fresh sympathies is the heart 
of travel. Whether one voyages in the Catskills 
or in the Mountains of the Moon matters only to 
the purse. The enjoyment is the same — the 
broaching of new casks of life. Both the Andes 
and the Adirondacks are cold stone, and to travel 
vast distances just to observe huger heaps of that 
betokens a fantastic judgment. It is the number 
of hearts disclosed or the depth delved into one 
that makes a trip successful. The only advantage 
of travel in the wilderness is that with fewer peo- 
ple your eye is clearer and you accept nothing 
from the habit of accepting it. Otherwise your 
home town, your street, your house, would be the 
completest stage you 'd need. It takes genius to 
travel in a city. Life there is too rich to be drunk 
swiftly of, and most have not the patience to travel 
slowly. They taste here and taste there, and 
travel on. But in the country, particularly in the 
back country of our great East, any amateur can 
enrich his trip. Any tyro in the art of living, if 
he but have some sympathy with folk, can ex- 
change confidences, can ballast his faith in human- 
ity, and put on ten pounds at the same time. Had 
I not ventured to Woodstock I should have been 
less rich by several friends. 

It was long past the bed-time of the quarter 



22 THE CATSKILLS 

moon when we recognized that it was ours. It 
was even further past sun-up when I came down 
to the breakfast which, in that pleasant country, 
marches gallantly to a stern conclusion of hot- 
cakes and maple syrup, attacking which every man 
must do his duty and at least one more. There is 
no quarter allowed. 

Punctually we met, my acquaintance of the Ford 
and I, in front of the church. He was "trimmed 
down for leggin' it," as he termed our pilgrimage, 
and we set out in a nipping air well satisfied with 
life and a little curious about the intimacies ahead, 
each somewhat shy about beginning them. I 
asked about the church, which is really very pic- 
turesque and piquing to the fancy, and Vreeland 
had told me that it was at least six generations old, 
when a breezy lad passed us and called out, ''Hello, 
Brute; where you makin' for?" 

*'The other side o' hell," my friend replied. 
**Want to go part way?" The briskness of the 
reply startled me. 

''I shall not be dull," I thought, and settled 
down to enjoy the trip. 

''Is Brute the name they gave you in the church, 
or a nickname?" I asked. 

"No; teacher gave it me. She said it was in 
Shakespeare — short for Brutus, you know. She 'd 
always giggle when she 'd say it. But she was 



WOODSTOCK AND THE OVERLOOK 23 

awful silly. Teachers are n't mostly like that, are 
they?" 

''Mostly," I replied. It looked as if the inti- 
macies were about to begin ; and, as I did not in- 
tend them to be premature, I had the conversation 
revert to the antiquities of Woodstock. Its for- 
tunes had gone up and down. In 1728 a Martin 
Snyder had settled, with his ten sons and un- 
counted daughters, not far from the spot, and his 
progeny had gradually enveloped the wilderness. 
Even in the memory of Brute, some of his neigh- 
bors quarreled in Dutch when under extreme 
provocation. For a while tanneries flourished up 
the brooks. The great hemlocks were felled and 
stripped and left to rot, only the bark being util- 
ized. Such reckless days brought on reaction. 
Then there was a period of blue-stone quarrying 
up on the Overlook, the great flat stones be- 
ing used for the edges of city gutters, for flag- 
ging pavement and doorsills. That era passed. 
Rather quickly the remaining timber was used up, 
the game shot out, the streams fished out. With 
the passing of fire-wood in great quantities passed 
the glass business which had grown up, sand hav- 
ing been brought from Jersey so that the fuel 
might be utilized. And now the fields were fit, at 
last, for crops and cows. 

It is a mile from the village to the foot of the 



24 THE CATSKILLS 

mountain, two miles of very genuine climb to the 
resting-place called Meads', and two more to the 
Overlook House. And there is no day too hot to 
make the exertion not worth while. In spring, 
even, the sun can be very earnest on that southern 
slope, but there are always wild fruits to enrich the 
way. The sun that had beguiled Brute and me 
upon the road soon shifted the responsibility for 
the day. Flurries of snow swept down upon us 
from the pass. Our early spring had suddenly lost 
its equilibrium and was falling back into the arms 
of winter. Bits of sunshine, pale and distraught, 
were racing thin and far over the dun landscape 
— the fragments of our glorious morning. We 
had paused to get our several breaths when I 
noticed a man turning off the road a little ahead. 
I requested a direction or two, and by some slip 
of the conversation I found that I was talking with 
a man who had lived with William Morris and had 
known Ruskin well. Such are the surprises of 
Woodstock. 

It was on another very different day, when the 
gardens at Byrdcliffe were rich with poppies and 
larkspur and the Persian rose, that Mr. Ralph 
Radcliffe Whitehead showed me about his moun- 
tainside. There he had intended that the families 
who had caught the flame of his ambition were to 
live. There they were to weave by hand, to 
fashion out their pleasure in pottery, and to work 



WOODSTOCK AND THE OVERLOOK 25 

in metals. Their children were to be taught to 
use their hands until they had reached college age. 
Health and simplicity and the genuine riches of 
life were to be the rewards for all. 

Byrdcliffe could not compete with Patterson. 
The factory is stronger than the hand that taught 
it, and Byrdcliffe is a shattered dream. But Mr. 
Whitehead's beautiful pottery is none the less 
beautiful, his nature nowise embittered by the 
shattering of the dream. In a room of his home 
hangs a coast-scene of Birge Harrison's. Its 
shimmering beauty I shall remember always. I 
should think that in the same way the beautiful 
endeavor at Byrdcliffe must stay always in the 
memory of Woodstock, making it a better village 
than it would otherwise have been. 

In the snow-veiled pastures who could conceive 
that buttercups and wild strawberries were but 
two months off! Up we struggled to Meads', and 
warmed our noses in the kitchen of that hospitable 
house. From the porch in clear weather there is 
a view, flanked by hillsides, that sweeps out over 
Woodstock, lights up in the shine of Ashokan 
Reservoir, and darkens to the southwest in the 
forests of the Peekamose country. The house 
sits comfortably in the hollow, and from the other 
end you look down over a pond into a deep wooded 
valley, sheltered on the north by the four peaks 
of the Indian Head range. To Brute and me they 



26 THE CATSKILLS 

spoke in terms of grim cold. From the passes ad- 
vanced veils of snow, and when the onslaught 
slackened the dark mountain-heads seemed to be 
threatening new squalls. 

From Meads' the road runs steeply up to the 
Overlook House. It is a consistent climb, and will 
have its effect on man or beast or motor; but all 
three accomplish it. On the way up trees obstruct 
the view, except occasionally to the left down into 
the beautifully wooded valley. But from the 
porch of the hotel the world lies visible. 

I cannot recall having seen an advertisement of 
this hostelry, but it is not hard to imagine the 
powerful adjectives which the management must 
have collected to describe that view. In summer, 
except on rare days, a blue haze narrows the spec- 
tacle to a radius of fifty miles. In the clearer 
atmosphere of winter it is very impressive. The 
Ashokan, the Hudson, highlands in seven States, 
the vast shoulder of earth, soar away from one. 
At last the earth is partially appreciable. It may 
not seem a sphere, but so much of it is seen that 
you realize that you are on an Earth. That is an 
extraordinary feeling. Go up higher mountains, 
and you lose contact with the globe. But this 
plain at your feet is yet near enough to show its 
pattern. When you rode through it, it seemed 
mostly farmland ; now it shows mainly wood. To 
the west rise the Catskills, range beyond range, 



WOODSTOCK AND THE OVERLOOK 27 

until the blue calm of summer frames the view. 

No summer visitors could have imagined the 
scene that opened to my journeyman and me for 
the few moments between squalls. The wind 
seemed to be gathering strength. For the space 
of a few seconds the cloud shadows would fly over 
the edge. Then the sun would stream after them. 
Out it would pour along the level plain below. 
Those distances below us were remote and cold. 
And the mountains at our backs were bleak with 
trailing gray, except when the April strength of 
sun overtook the February carnival of snow and 
overcame it. Then the flame of life seemed to 
flare for a glad moment before being overwhelmed 
by the next onslaught. 

The great single fact was the pressure of the 
wind during the squalls. With its broad hand 
the gale pushed against the exposed flanks of the 
hotel until the cables that fastened it to the earth 
tightened and sang, and I began to wonder how 
long mere wood and nails were going to survive. 
It was a bold architect who planted such an ex- 
panse of board on such an exposed perch. In win- 
ter 's heaviest gales the weight of wind must be 
enormous. Even on our day of ruthless weather, 
when the great blasts, tawny with driven flakes, 
swept down upon us, roaring as they came, we felt 
there were chances of not remaining attached to 
terra firma. It was as exhilarating as a run at sea, 



28 THE CATSKILLS 

sails glistening and rail a-wash. And I was 
secretly delighted that the youth beside me was 
held by the fascination of it, too. 

** Would n't it fool you!" he exclaimed, after a 
while, as we stood near the brink looking down into 
the indefinite depths at our feet. **It certainly 
would fool you. To think I never took the bother 
to come up, and me looking at this old white hotel 
all these steens of years." 

''How does it hit you?" 

' ' There 's not a word to cover it. I used to hear 
those art-painters talk about it till I guessed it 'd 
make me sick. They did, anyway. They 're 
mostly high-dome pussy-cats. They 'd say, 'Oh! 
was n't it grand! Was n't it colossal!' " 

"Well, what do you think of it? Weren't the 
high-dome pussy-cats right?" I tried not to 
sound amused. 

"Absolutely," he admitted meekly, "I 've got 
to go back and slobber just like them, 'Ain't it 
grand! Ain't it colossal!' if they 're the words 
meaning what you can't take in and wish you could. 
I 'd like to watch the thing out." 

I was beginning to like him. There are cer- 
tain things essential in the friend who is to walk by 
one 's side through rough weather as well as fine — 
generosity, a sense of humor, a sense of beauty, 
honesty, a liking for adventure. The man that I 
had partly divined in that first roadside meeting 



WOODSTOCK AND THE OVERLOOK 29 

was beginning to come true. Already I knew that 
I could trust this youthful native far; even as far, 
possibly, as he had picturesquely'forecast our jour- 
ney — 'Ho the other side o' hell.'* 



I 



CHAPTER III 

MEANDERING BY THE MAP 

TOO, would have liked to watch the thing out. 

. But there was another consideration besides 
the fleeting beauties of the roaring landscape. 
Remaining on our unprotected perch involved 
freezing to death; and, as we were already blue 
with the persistent blasts, we reluctantly left the 
dumb hotel to their vengeance and sought a little 
woodland harbor for our lunch. 

A path rises to the northeast from the building 
and skirts the cliff. On one side rises the forest, 
on the other falls the abyss. There are a thou- 
sand of the finest opportunities for self-destruc- 
tion, but Brute and I felt very well satisfied with 
life and did not avail ourselves. Instead, in a 
sheltered semicircle of young spruce we made a 
little fire and in its golden circle devoured food. 

Then we got out the map. Maps are as invalu- 
able as meals to any person who intends to enjoy 
the Catskill country. The legend of the large- 
scale masterpieces is a fascinating short story to 
the man who walks. For it must be understood at 
the outset that the Catskill country is able to re- 
spond to the exactions of the experienced as well 

30 



MEANDERING BY THE MAP 31 

as to the simpler pleasures of the amateur trav- 
eler. It is as versatile a pleasure-land as one may 
wish for. It provides motor roads of excellence 
through an extensive woodland. There are bears 
for the hunter, and hotels for his wife. Old men 
who have never seen a railroad live but a few miles 
from resplendent garages. 

Time was when the Catskills were about the 
only mountain country available for the fortnight 
vacation. The White Mountains were a little far 
away, and the Adirondacks an unexplored wilder- 
ness. The West was unknown. Now it is but a 
day from Broadway to Montreal. A trip to be 
talked about means at least Australia or the Ural 
Mountains. Therefore the Catskills are passed 
by. They are actually getting wilder. There are 
more deer in them than ever before, as many bear. 
Fewer people put up at the big hotels than when 
Queen Victoria was planning her Jubilee. Conse- 
quently a man with a map in his hand can plunge 
into as wild a wild as most men want four or five 
hours after he has left his taxicab in New York. 
The map is an important consideration : the Gov- 
ernment map the only thing {cf. Appendix). 

From the safety of a train platform it is easy to 
under-estimate the difficulty of cross-country 
travel through the Catskill woods. Once swal- 
lowed by the forest, which is of second growth, 
very thick and very much alike, the hill-shoulder 



32 THE CATSKILLS 

that you judged would be so easy to follow be- 
comes a maze of distracting side-slopes ; the peak 
for which you were making apparently has ceased 
to exist ; and the summits are so long and flat that 
you never know when you have reached the exact 
top. But the Government maps show every trail, 
every road, every roadside house, streamlet, ford, 
and spring. In planning out the day's progress 
they will inform you as to whether you will find 
secondary roads or the superior roads of State. 
With the contour lines and a compass, cross-woods 
travel becomes secure. Every vagary of the slope, 
each knoll, each rill of water, is there to identify 
your location. 

Following the map soon became an obsession 
with Brute. His keen interest in affairs of ac- 
curacy was stimulated by the unfailing way in 
which these sheets of paper delivered us to our 
destination. When our supper depended on the 
one way out of some vast labyrinth like the slopes 
of Panther Mountain or the featureless expanses 
about the head-waters of the Beaverkill, there was 
supreme satisfaction in being able to say, "That 
way lies a summit, this a ledge. I must follow 
east-southeast for a mile to reach that brook, 
which I shall know is the right one because of the 
woodsman's road beside it." 

It was, then, with something of this satisfaction 
that Brute and I, on our snowy ledge, plotted our 



MEANDERING BY THE MAP 33 

next move. To be sure, while there was a diver- 
sity of interest, there was a paucity of possibility. 
Although in our nook we were safe from the gale, 
it flew roaring above us at intervals and shook 
down a tinsel of light snow. On a summer's day 
we would have taken time to investigate Echo Lake 
and to climb Indian Head on our way to the Platte- 
kill Clove. But we decided to edge around the 
cliff until we struck the road and follow that to 
supper. 

Indeed, at that altitude of three thousand feet 
there was slight evidence of the thaw that had been 
raging in our city streets. The snow beside the 
trail was upwards of two feet deep. In spots 
where the sun had basked on the open ledges fell 
cascades of ice. Everyivhere sat winter, worn 
and senile, but capable of making our progress 
difficult. And at the rate the cold was increasing 
we could take any pace without much danger of 
arriving in a lather. 

On a clear day in winter or summer that walk 
from the Overlook to Plaat Clove affords extraor- 
dinary views over the Hudson. The road was 
once used for carriages, but nature has restaked 
her claim. Washouts, new trees, deserted flag- 
stone quarries, decaying cabins mark the re-occu- 
pancy by the wilderness. It is doubly lonely now, 
and the porcupine, the fox, the woodchuck, and the 
bear openly share the territory with their shyer 



84 THE CATSKILLS 

neighbors. Several times we had to avoid slip- 
ping into the depths by going on all fours across 
a river of ice. It grew fairly late, and we were 
tired with the snow-tramping and wind-buffeting 
before we stumbled down some long slopes, crossed 
a rickety bridge, and entered the scattered village 
of Plaat Clove. 

For the past hour our conversation had special- 
ized on things to eat, and we had determined to 
pitch upon a house that had a prosperous air. At 
length, after passing one or another because of 
some defect in its shingling or the paint, we 
knocked upon a well-to-do looking door which 
seemed capable of offering to us at least three 
courses, if not a salad. The light from its win- 
dow shone straight to the heart, for night had 
suddenly fallen and we were not yet acclimated 
to the feeling of homelessness. A little girl 
opened the door about wide enough to admit a 
lizard, and through this aperture I ventured to 
project my wishes. In a minute the little girl 
came back, said mama said something, and 
slammed the door upon our three-course dreams. 
"What a noise that door made ! It seemed to rever- 
berate through our hollow interiors. Brute spoke 
in the vernacular. 

**Gosh!" he said. *'Now we know what a 
spider feels like." 

Without commenting on the sensitiveness of 




Vh..tL,grai.h hy William F. Kriebel 



A Sawkill Memory 




Spluttkkkill, Splatterkill 



MEANDERING BY THE MAP 37 

that insect, I should say that I felt very flat. 

''The next house is yours," I said, "and for 
Pete 's sake put your foot in the door. ' ' 

The next house would have been passed by 
earlier, for the rain-spout was broken; but our 
three courses had now come down to two and a 
bed. This time a woman answered our knock. 
Brute's voice, coming from such a broad-chested 
youth, sounded ludicrously meek : 

"Please, ma'am, is it too late to get some 
supper?" 

The lamplight shone on his good-looking, wind- 
reddened face, and his appearance must have won 
over anything short of shrew ; but the woman said 
shortly : 

"Yes, supper 's all put away; besides, there 
is n't much in the house. But up the road maybe 
they '11 give you something. ' ' 

"No, I don't think they will," I interrupted, 
"and we really won't eat much if — " 

' * Up the road — ' ' she began. 

Brute turned, without a word ; but no master of 
the unspoken drama could have performed an oath 
more delicately with a simple gesture of a pre- 
sented back. I tried the Christian device of thank- 
ing the lady as heartily as if she had presented us 
with two roast turkeys ; but it affected her not a 
bit, and I hurried to catch up with my enraged com- 
panion. On that cold road there seemed no heat 



38 THE CATSKILLS 

left in the universe, but we felt not its loss. We 
burned to have at these fed but unfeeding people. 
We longed to demolish a house or two. We pic- 
tured the pleasure of setting one on fire, warming 
our fingers over the embers while the late house- 
holders cowered before us and offered us fried 
potatoes and custard pie. It put us in spirit, and 
suddenly Brute laughed aloud. 

**You can't blame them. You 've an awful hun- 
gry look. I 've got an idea, and I bet you we 're 
fed at the next place. I '11 manage it. ' ' 

**How?" I inquired. 

*'You wait. All you have to do is eat." 

There was some doubt at first as to whether 
there would be a next house. When it appeared, 
it looked dark and wind-beaten, unpromising for 
even a crust. But up the lane we trudged, I lag- 
ging. This time a man came. 

"Good evening, sir," began Brute, apparently 
with all confidence. "Could I have a drink of 
water?" 

The man looked somewhat surprised, but, as he 
couldn't well refuse, bade us enter. I registered 
a point for Brute. The water came. 

"Would it bother you," continued the boy, "to 
sell us a couple of pieces of bread? We '11 spread 
them ourselves." 

"Like a little meat with them?" asked the man. 

"Yes; and if there are any potatoes that could 



MEANDERING BY THE MAP 39 

be fried easily, and perhaps a pinch of tea — It 
was pretty cold on the mountain. We 're pre- 
pared to pay." 

"How far 'a' yon come?" asked the man, put- 
ting down the lamp, which was a good omen. 
** Strikes me you fellers 'd like a real meal. Ma," 
he called into the next room, ''here 's a couple of 
fellers who Ve had jest raisins and chocolate for 
their dinner. I guess you kin git 'em up a little 
something." 

''I guess I kin," she said. And I guess she did. 
And if it had n't been strictly forbidden I 'd put 
down her name in capitals. For the "little some- 
thing" began with a four-egg omelet and wound 
up with some wild strawberry jam, with our 
original three courses in between. We sat about 
the stove and talked till nearly ten o'clock. And 
that is dissipation for those who rise at five. 

Before we went to bed the good dame warmed 
us a cherry-pit bag, against the rigors of arctic 
sheets. The discovery of that cherry-pit bag was 
alone worth the long trudge across the Plattekill 
heights. Cherry-stones thoroughly heated in an 
oven will keep their heat all night. Before we 
slept we laughed once more over the strategy that 
had gained us our entry. And that was a rule of 
the road which we applied many times thereafter: 
7/ you want something big, begin with something 
easy and work up. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE WALL OF MANITOU 

BREAKFAST was no betrayer of the expec- 
tations raised by supper. The Good Dame 
of Plattekill Clove, (as our hostess is registered in 
heaven,) brought in buckwheat cakes that had to 
have a cover on them to keep them down, and there 
was nothing at all inconspicuous about their size. 

The weather did not do so well by us. The air 
tides were still setting in from the north; the 
tinselly snow was still flurrying; and, since there 
was no likelihood of a view from any of the sur- 
rounding points of vantage, we made a virtue of 
abnegation and wanted none. 

There is at the top of the Clove a gorge called 
by the ambitious inhabitants the Grand Canon. 
We visited this, and found that to loiter down it, 
to really digest the formations and appreciate the 
trees, is a matter of many hours. At the very top, 
in the Devil's Kitchen, as their fancy names it, 
there is a scene that distresses all artists who have 
not brought along the means of reproducing it. 
The road passes over the gorge by a small arch so 

40 



THE WALL OF MANITOU 41 

beautifully rounded and bastioned with rock that 
it is a little sermon on the value of doing the ordi- 
nary well and with an eye to beauty. The brook 
sings a little lament as it goes through this arch : 
it is leaving lovely fields and is about to be lost in a 
series of mad plunges. When we saw it first it 
had whitened the entire cavern with frost. In the 
spring it riots down those great stone steps. Our 
guide, she who keeps the charming Inn near by, 
said that in great freshets it was master of the 
gorge, filling it with foam and noise and demolish- 
ing the stairways, which they annually rebuild. 

In this microscopic Grand Caiion grow primeval 
trees that can never be cut. Above, boulders lean 
over, and are ready to pounce down when the 
magic command is given. Dark dens lean back 
into the mountain from which skew-eyed goblins 
can be drafted into Puck's midnight gang. On a 
day of dark bluster, with thin snow sifting down 
the while, this gorge becomes almost sinister and 
oppressive. But in June, when the sun beats on 
the fields of hawk-weed and daisy and the roads 
are hot with dust, this place is a cool refuge, a 
wonderland for wandering in. Occasionally the 
scene opens and you look out over a green floor of 
light-tipped hemlocks down the Clove. Far out 
to sea — the blue sea of distant counties — farm- 
lands lie in the haze of heat; but always you are 
buoyed by the cool breeze from down the ravines. 



42 THE CATSKILLS 

Water runs everywhere, mosses drip, and some 
leisurely bird warbles in content. 

In this gorge there are many waterfalls. The 
Ghost's broad veil is well named and very real 
at dusk. But Brute and I were menaced by the 
icicles hanging overhead to the length of twenty 
feet and sharpened to a dagger's point. We were 
invited to destruction by the smooth aprons of in- 
clined ice across which we sidled on all fours. 
Half-frozen, and with our appreciations benumbed 
by a thousand difficulties we were scarcely able to 
give to the nuances of beauty their full due. But 
my memory tells me this : that gorge, unadvertised 
and not very famous, is the finest miniature of 
wilderness in the Catskills, and the beauty of its 
trees, lichened rocks, cascades, and glimpses of the 
plain will repay a lengthy visit at any season. If 
one does not go to be awed, he will remain to be 
charmed. The enjoyment of the Catskills depends 
on the same point of view. If one visits them as 
one may visit the Canadian Eockies, in the expec- 
tation of having all of one's big emotions drawn 
out and played upon, there will be hideous disap- 
pointment. There is nothing big about the Cats- 
kills. They are as comfortable as home. They 
were created, not for observation-cars, but for 
bungalow porches. Yet they are not so little. In- 
deed, while Brute and I sat that night in the 
kitchen of the Good Dame 's, listening to her hus- 



THE WALL OF MANITOU 43 

band tell of the wildcats he had trapped, they 
seemed very wild and very extensive. 

No two people to-day will agree as to what are 
the Catskills. We came upon mountaineers liv- 
ing to the west of Belle Ayre, in the heart of the 
wildest portion of the woods, who disclaimed 
any connection, while still farther west we came 
upon a village in the plain who contended for it. 
Even the origin of the name is still disputed. 
Some would have it derived from the creatures 
of even-song. But the etymology contradicts that. 
The plural of cats in Dutch is katten, or at a pinch 
katte, but never kats. By a confusing coincidence, 
the bay lynx, which once made so free with most of 
the colonial forest, chose these woods for his last 
fortress. Even to-day they are more abundant in 
the mountains surrounding Slide, Hunter, and 
Peekamose than they are in the larger Adiron- 
dack cover. 

But it must be remembered that, at first, one 
little stream was called Cats' Kill, which was 
named in honor of the poet of Brouwershaven. In 
his day Jacob Cats cut considerable figure at the 
Dutch bar. He was made the Chief Magistrate of 
Middleburg and Dordrecht, the Grand Pensionary 
of West Friesland, and finally the Keeper of the 
Great Seal of Holland. He is found in our libra- 
ries to-day. At the very time that Hendrik Hud- 
son was eating roast dog with his red-faced hosts 



44 THE CATSKILLS 

near the outlet of the brook that was to be Cats' 
Kill, Mr. Cats was penning amatory emblems be- 
hind his native dikes. He wrote ' ' Sinne en Minne 
Beelden," a collection of moralizations and 
worldly wisdom, perhaps derived from his own 
experience, as in the following : 

Nineteen nay-says o' a maiden are ha'f a grant. 

By his indefatigable industry he turned out 
nineteen volumes of this sort of thing, with poems 
which a critic of the time declared to be charac- 
terized by *' simplicity, rich fancy, clearness and 
purity of style, and excellent moral tendency." 

With a record like that, it is small wonder that 
the map-makers, half distraught for names for 
the myriad brooks of the region, should decide to 
call one after the Grand Pensionary, in the same 
way that they were naming Block Island after 
Adrian Blok and Kaap May for Admiral May. So 
Cats got his Kill, and the mountains in which it 
rose were soon called the Catskills, the name 
spreading until it took in first the whole region 
north of the Esopus, then the still higher group at 
the head of which stands Slide, and finally some of 
the out-running ranges to the west. 

Brute and I covered, in our several trips, a 
block of highland country occupying about sixteen 
hundred square miles, all of which has a right, by 
origin, contour, similarity of surface, and inter- 



THE WALL OF MANITOU 45 

relation, to be known as the Catskills. The limits 
are roughly as follows: On the east the nearly 
vertical wall extending from High Point by the 
Reservoir parallel to the Hudson, and about ten 
miles from it to Mt. Pisgah about thirty miles 
north. On the southwest from High Point along 
the valley north of the Shawangunk Range to 
Napanoch, west to Livingston Manor, to include 
the wild region of small trees and small ponds. 
On the west a rough line from Livingston Manor 
up to Stamford, through Arena, Andes, and Bo- 
vina Center. On the north by an arc from Stam- 
ford to Livingstonville. There pretends to be 
nothing dogmatic about our trip, the limits we 
reached, or boundaries suggested. But this rough 
block of elevated territory constitutes a unit for 
adventure and exploration. The blue line on the 
State Forest map follows about the same bound- 
aries on the east and south, but has not included 
the interesting but more open country in the neigh- 
borhood of Mt. Utsayantha at Stamford. 

This great isolated citadel of upland appealed 
to the Indians as something extraordinary and to 
be accounted for. They said that Manitou had 
erected it as a defense from hostile spirits. As a 
citadel the region made its first appeal to me. 
Any person passing along the Hudson, and seeing 
this dim, impressive wall of rock through the low- 
land haze, must be reminded, I should think, of 



46 THE CATSKILLS 

that legend. Rising abruptly from the valley floor 
and continuing with high rampart and tremendous 
buttresses, it watches over the peace of the plain. 
The great wall is no longer grim, as in Manitou's 
day, for it is usually veiled with mists of blue. It 
is the gigantic memoir of some far-off time. 

This citadel is easily visualized. Picture the 
eastern rampart, three thousand feet above the 
farmland, running for thirty miles along the river, 
towered at intervals and at both ends by massive 
Gibraltars, broken only a few times by giant cause- 
ways which lead up into the central fortress. You 
have then the aspect from the East. 

The central fortress is divided into the northern 
Catskills, with Hunter Mountain as the chief 
height, and the southern Catskills, with its group 
of mountains culminating in Slide, both peaks be- 
ing a little higher than four thousand feet. The 
Esopus Creek runs between these groups from 
west to east. The fortress has no pronounced 
western wall. Valleys lead out into the plateau 
country. In the north this high region, only 
slightly under two thousand feet, is rich with pas- 
ture. In the south it is still covered with forest 
and small lakes. 

This region — bounded on the east by the Hud- 
son plain, on the north by fertile farmland, on 
the west by a ridgy terrain that is to rise again 
in the mountains of Pennsylvania, and on the south 



THE WALL OF lilANITOU 4-7 

by other farmlands — was the fortified abode of the 
Great Spirit. It became the storehouse of the 
early settlers, who took from it furs and game, 
hemlock bark, timber riches, slate, and who finally 
moved into its sheltering valleys. This region is 
still a citadel. In winter, though but a hundred 
miles from the center of the world, it is as isolated 
as a frontier. In summer into this capacious for- 
tress withdraw thousands of city people seeking 
refuge from heat and the stress of streets. 

It is a refuge apart. Looking down from the 
great rampart on the ordinary world below, many 
a man has thanked Manitou for this retreat. Not 
only the casual transportation facilities but even 
the geology of the region contributes to the feel- 
ing of separation. The citadel is an anomaly 
amid its neighboring mountains. 

In one of those leisurely ages some 43,000,000 
years ago, as some geologist has bravely computed, 
there was a gulf in the vast Devonian sea which 
had thrust itself between the Adirondack Plateau 
of Laurentide memory and the Green Mountain 
Range. Into this gulf poured silt. Its bottom 
subsided for about a mile, and the sediment con- 
tinued to settle in layers until the coal-making era 
was about to commence. By then the bottom of 
this particular gulf had heaved above the ocean 
level and became the Catskills. The early rise ac- 
counts for the absence of coal in the Catskill 



48 THE CATSKILLS 

region, for these lands never went under water 
again. Hence all the formations and discoveries 
can be allotted to the subcarboniferous period. 
Even before the Catskills had entirely emerged, 
the interior of the continent had begun to rise, 
and this accounts for the slight southern dip of the 
strata. 

The succeeding age, the coal age, came to a con- 
clusion with a tremendous upheaval. The force 
of this upheaval caused the formation of the main 
ranges of the Appalachian system, and doubled 
the size of our continent. Most mountains are 
caused by the buckling of the strata, the warping 
of the earth-skin; but the Catskills, despite the 
rigors of the surrounding performance, re- 
mained unconvulsed. Isolated, hardened, they 
kept a level head, and are so to-day. You find 
outcropping ledges, an absence of pointed peaks, 
a multitude of waterfalls, and you realize that 
erosion has done it all. 

There is another difference, too, between the 
Catskill fortress and the surrounding mountains. 
They did not succumb to the ice age. All the true 
ranges of upheaval, like the Appalachians, run 
from southwest to northeast. The Catskill ranges 
run from southeast to northwest. So, when the 
great Glacier gouged out the Adirondacks and 
kindred regions, damming the valleys and sweep- 
ing easily down the southwestern avenues, it could 



THE WALL OF MANITOU 49 

no more than slop over the transverse Catskill 
ridges. In this case the Catskills' strength was 
their loss. They have no large lakes. 

For all the hardihood that had withstood the 
ordeal by primeval fire and the assault by ice, the 
Citadel had finally to compromise with water. It 
surrendered to the tiny stream. The tooth of 
rills has gnawed out the vitals of the proud 
plateau until the Kaaterskill Clove, the Stony 
Clove, and the other valleys made it possible for 
the well-rounded Dutch to conquer the interior. 

This was the stronghold that Brute and I were 
entering with our rover's commission. From this 
mountain fastness, towering above the Shawan- 
gunk, the Green Mountains, the nursling hills of 
the Delaware, and rising to the chin of the elder 
Adirondacks, we were to look doAvn on a rich 
green land. We thought that we were taking pos- 
session of it. In reality it was taking possession 
of us. With every step we took we delivered our- 
selves into its hand. For it came to exercise upon 
us the only power that can conquer, assimilate, 
and ruthlessly possess forever, — the power of per- 
fect beauty. 



CHAPTER V 

APOSTASY OF A CHEERFUL LIAR 

THE map had disclosed three possibilities of 
travel from Plaat Clove to Twilight Park. 
But only the morrow could disclose its sky. Our 
host, who claimed an intimacy with the adjacent 
weather, predicted a cessation of the snow-flurries 
during the night. But with the north wind still 
doing its laborious worst, we weighed each route 
with the care employed by those who travel thor- 
oughly — and have nothing else till bedtime. 

The most interesting way led along the eastern 
parapet of mountain that runs about two thousand 
feet above the river valley. If the weather should 
clear, the contour lines promised us a magnificent 
off-look at a hundred places. Two miles north 
High Peak's shoulder slants in a human way to 
the place where the epaulette should be, and then 
drops abruptly, giving a view of an immense am- 
phitheater. This route along the continuing bluff 
was also short as well as scenic. At the thought 
of its concise elegance we wished our host well with 
his weather. 

The second road led down through the Clove to 

50 



APOSTASY OF A CHEERFUL LIAR 51 

the base of the Peak's main mass, skirted that, and 
went up through the Kaaterskill Clove. If the in- 
competent squalls should turn into a genuine 
storm, we could take that. 

The third route marched up to the apex of 
the triangle at Tannersville and then down to 
Twilight, very much King-of-France style. This 
was long but on the level. 

The morning came from force of habit, and we 
awoke, but not to the sun. The same corpse-col- 
ored clouds; the same northern gusts. We 
dressed shiveringly in the Good Dame's guest- 
room; Brute's face, a vision of pale blue compli- 
cated with red prominences. Only the knowledge 
that heaven (the kitchen range) was below kept my 
fingers from freezing to the clothes they tried to 
button. If there is any virtue to be got from 
pioneering, we were virtuous from the epidermis 
in. But there is some potency in a quire of hot- 
cakes. The Good Dame surpassed herself. We 
listened again while her husband told his tale : cer- 
tainly clear by the afternoon and warmer anyway. 
So we stayed and helped the man repair his trout 
tackle, for the new season was but three long 
wishes off. 

Dinner was the plump affair which was the 
pretty custom of this family: a pork roast being 
the axis around which revolved subsidiary dishes 
in a pleasant, planetary way. Speaking in the 



52 THE CATSKILLS 

same spirit of parable that describes good little 
boys as composed of sugar plums, one could say 
that the Catskills were made of roast pork. A 
porkless day in those mountains means a dinner- 
less day. Every household is not considered com- 
plete unless equipped with a dynasty of squealers. 
The procession, in winter at least, runs serenely 
on — sty, rafter, and the dinner-table — and a day 
without pig would be as disconsolate an affair as 
a week without a Saturday night. But there need 
be no feeling of monotony. There is no animal 
so versatile and none, I am sure, whose treatment 
is so diversified. On our trip the gamut of prepa- 
ration ranged in taste from venison to whale. 

When our host, after dinner, had postponed the 
clearing until the morrow or the day after, we felt 
that we must leave, compromising on the road 
toward Tannersville. With reluctance we set out, 
but that was soon forgotten in the pleasure of the 
road again. With our knapsacks on our backs and 
the rhythm of the road in our hearts, there came 
over me, at least, that sense of well-being it is hard 
to get in any other way than on foot. I did not 
know Brute well enough yet to decipher what lan- 
guage the wild country spoke to him, but I was 
glad to see that at least he did not wear his emo- 
tion, like a riband, around his sleeve. And so well 
had we begun to work in double harness that, as we 
set out along the opening valley, it seemed impossi- 






V'v^ 



i^:«lsi!^. 



iv...<fct,^ 



'Jf^-% 



^v^-. 



fiS& 






^% 



S^>_^&^ -^J 



.A ^\ 7I»|-'*.''A. 



Phot. .graph l.y J. P.. Allison 



Mountainside — Santa (ri z 1'akk 



APOSTASY OF A CHEERFUL LIAR 55 

ble that we should have known each other so short 
a while, even though of experience so variously 
full. It is the same way, however, with all walking 
trips. Close to earth everything is of importance. 
In the first few miles of the walker 's day there is 
a sense of well-being to promote good-fellowship, 
in the last few a sense of comradeship to mitigate 
fatigue. As Brute said once, ''With the fellow 
you like, you can walk from anywhere at all to any- 
where else and never mind the distance." And I 
might add that the surest test of the right friend 
is the ability to go nowhere-in-particular with 
him and still be interested and happy. 

Our afternoon was to be remembered chiefly for 
its dramatic close, but still, despite the muscular 
wind and the unleavened clouds, I shall have no 
trouble thinking back with pleasure on the body of 
the march. 

As the valley widened we had glimpses at times 
through the variable veil of snow of Indian Head 
and Sugarloaf dimly on the left, of Round Top 
and High Peak, the splendid culmination of the 
great ground swell, looming indistinctly on the 
right. What sort of introduction to these Catskill 
ranges is best, I have never yet decided. Should 
one have all the possible beauty first as in those 
dazzling firework bombs that explode in showers of 
stars? Or should one get acquainted by degrees 
and with mounting enthusiasm to the final appre- 



56 THE CATSKILLS 

elation, as in the crescendo of a rocket's flight? I 
have seen this valley shining in the dews of a 
spring morning and glowing with the supremest 
glories of October, hot with the hazy breathless- 
ness of a July noon, and whipped with winter 
winds. Yet through the half -luminous snow-dust 
of that first acquaintance the mountains took on an 
eerie height they do not in reality possess, and in 
that light I idealize them yet. 

It is in this valley that one of the strange tricks 
which rivers seem to delight in is played. Waters 
falling at the head of the Plattekill Clove all reach 
the Hudson. One stream reaches it in ten merry 
miles. The other in a hundred and seventy-five. 
The course of the Plattekill Creek is the course of a 
thousand cascades. In a couple of miles it falls a 
couple of thousand feet and loafs the rest of the 
way across the narrow plain. The other is the 
Schoharie. It is hard to tell where it rises, which 
is the parent spring, for in the short six miles 
there are more than thirty ravines each contribut- 
ing a rill to make the brook. But I should imagine 
that the stream on Indian Head might have the 
credit, for its source is farthest east. From there 
the water runs west and north, east in the Mohawk 
and south from Albany. Some day some poet will 
wander down the full length of this enchanting 
stream and tell its adventures for the inland water 
babies. In that short life from Plaate Clove to the 



APOSTASY OF A CHEERFUL LIAR 57 

sea, its water meets all the vicissitudes of longer 
streams. 

The hastening afternoon and a re-survey of the 
map were responsible for our decision to cut off 
across a spur of Round Top, called Clum Hill. 
This would shorten the way by two or three miles, 
which were to be missed very slightly, and would 
give us a view of many lands. Unfortunately the 
road chosen can never reveal what was missed on 
the way not taken. But by re-routeing destiny we 
were treated to two experiences which, for superla- 
tiveness of sort, the way by Tannersville would 
have been hard put to it to excel. 

Clum Hill is strategic ground for the view- 
seeker. Any time of day pays interest on the 
climb. But morning is best. Then Round Top is 
in relief, and shadows spread down the ravines of 
Sugarloaf and Indian Head, Twin Mountain and 
Plateau, that would rend a cubist with delight. 
Doubtless from such a scene it was that the first 
Art Fiend got his idea. Certainly the triangles, 
quadrilaterals, and parallelopipeds of the new art 
are all to be found cast in fascinating shadow into 
the gulfs. The facts that they are cast into the 
gulfs should give the cubists pause, but there they 
are, bold blocks of beauty to lend strength to the 
airier lines and color of the rest of the landscape. 
The thing the cubist artists forget to do is to put 
in the rest of the landscape. 



68 THE CATSKILLS 

From Clum Hill the valley of the Schoharie nar- 
rows to the northwest, where the Hunter Range 
and the East Jewett Range lose themselves in blue. 
Below to the north lies Tannersville, and still 
farther north rise the protecting slopes of Parker 
Mountain with Onteora Park sitting beneath its 
chin. But the sight that makes Clum Hill one of 
the imperative delights to see is the upper loveli- 
ness of the Schoharie guarded by Indian Head and 
his mountain kin. Here and there on the bottom- 
land the hayfields shine against the maple woods. 
Here and there the blue smoke of noon dinners 
(pork chops and apple butter) floats across sunny 
roofs. Elka Park nestles beneath Spruce Top, 
and back of all the big Plateau Mountain comforts 
one with its solidity. Morning, noon, or evening 
there are more rational pleasures to be got from 
sitting comfortably on Clum with your back 
against a tree than in many a whole day's march. 

But when Brute and I first topped that engaging 
height there was very little thought about sitting. 
There were no hayfields, no pork chops in the view. 
The north wind was as sharp as suspicion's tooth. 
But at that moment was being prepared for us a 
surprise that was to make amends for the cloudy 
monotone of squalls, for the leaden ceiling and 
ragged hangings of the last two days' entertain- 
ment. So uniform had been the coloring of the 
afternoon that we had paid no attention to the 



APOSTASY OF A CHEERFUL LIAR 59 

time. We did not realize that evening was upon 
us, until, through a tear in the sky-furnishings 
near the horizon, the sun shone levelly across us. 
The change was plain magic. In the space of a 
thrill the world turned the color of a plum pre- 
serve. The clouds dripped rose, and the snow 
drank up the color. The forests shone with rare 
tintings; only the hemlocks refused the mask of 
carnival. The long bulk of Plateau Mountain and 
the receding peaks glowed with a hue that was 
neither faded carmine nor old lavender. As the 
scene brightened for an instant everything seemed 
to swim in the freshet of strange light. 

There are spring sunsets so cool, so fragrant, 
that they make you draw long breaths of peace; 
and there are midwinter brilliancies that exhilar- 
ate you with their strength. But this Arabian 
Nights' display was different. It was breathless, 
unannounced, like a universal lightning. It is one 
thing to watch the slow summer light deepen and 
fade away ; it is quite another to be thrown into a 
sea of exotic splendor and held down. Art never 
takes the breath; the circus does. Nature was en- 
joying one of her rare, sensational moments. Al- 
most at once, as if a spot-light had been removed, 
the color faded and went out. We had had an ex- 
perience. 

And now we were to have another. There is a 
farm possessing the near-top of the cleared hill. 



60 THE CATSKILLS 

and from the farm a trail runs along and down 
the northern side of the ridge until, in the course 
of a couple of miles, it joins the carriage drive into 
Twilight Park. If we were to take the road to 
Tannersville and Haines Falls we would have all 
of four miles to go. Remembering our fortunes of 
the night before in arriving late for supper, we 
were unanimous in choosing the shorter route de- 
spite the woods, the failing light, the snow. It was 
a risk, but we were assured at the farm that the 
trail was easy to follow, being sign-posted every 
little while, and, as the worldly Brute remarked, 
the grub was worth the gamble. 

We crossed the open fields without difficulty, con- 
nected with the trail-end, passed a sign or two of 
reassurance, and came, as had been predicted, to a 
sugar-grove. There a youth of fourteen in baggy 
trousers was preparing for the sugar season by 
tapping the gray-barked maples with steel spouts. 
In the grove evening was already loitering. 

"Maybe we 'd better go by the road after all,'* 
suggested Brute. 

**Let 's ask him.'' We turned off the trail and 
went over to the boy. *'Is it a fairly plain trail 
to Twilight Park ? " I think ' * fairly ' ' was our un- 
doing. 

"Sure," he said in an optimistic treble; "you 
can't miss it." He gave us the same directions 
that we had received at the farm and finished with, 



APOSTASY OF A CHEERFUL LIAR 61 

* * You can 't miss it. Only don 't turn off when you 
get to the thicket. Jes ' go right through. ' ' 

Reinspired, we pushed on. As the slope was 
northerly, the snow was hard, and we walked 
rapidly. The woods seemed fairly open, and twice 
we were assured by signs that we were on the trail, 
but we saw no thicket. In a few minutes we al- 
tered our course, in order to be sure of the thicket. 
After having set our teeth to go through it, we 
were anxious to meet it. In another five minutes 
we were nervous for not having met it. 

**Let 's go back and pick it up," suggested 
Brute. *'We dares n't sidestep it." It was 
rather dark now and difficult to follow our back 
trail. 

After a while, ' ' This is n 't a trail ; it 's a creek. ' ' 

It was. I went through the ice. We edged up 
the slope a little. 

''Do you suppose Twilight Park 's any dark- 
er 'n this?" asked Brute. ''It must 'a' been a 
blind man began it. ' ' All humor is of the soil, and 
when Brute relapsed into the speech of the soil I 
knew that he was feeling the humor of the occa- 
sion. Many a time our trip might have expired 
from misadventure if it had n't been for this sense 
of humor which welled up always a little higher 
than the peak of the immediate misfortune. 

I was busy keeping up with the dim knapsack 
ahead of me, for when Brutus is agitated his 



62 THE CATSKILLS 

stride lengthens. At length he collided with an 
invisible beech. But his only remark was, "I 'd 
like to get my hands on the cheerful liar who said 
we could n 't miss our way. ' ' 

*'He lied better than he knew," I said, ''for 
there 's a light." 

We stumbled excitedly along. But the light 
went out. In a minute we found ourselves in the 
ashen gloom of that sugar-grove of twenty minutes 
back, with the same boy still in his identical 
trousers. He was coolly gathering up his tools. 
The light had been transferred to a cigarette. 

''Hello," he said, "so it 's you fellers again. 
Get lost?" 

"No. Been huntin' mushrooms," muttered 
Brute. "Got a lantern!" 

The boy, enveloped in cigarette smoke and dark- 
ness, said nothing. 

"He doesn't really mean a lantern for mush- 
rooms," I hastened to explain, "but we could n't 
find the thicket and we'll return it to-morrow." 

The boy had n't any lantern. But he offered to 
put us beyond the thicket, and for a little money I 
secured his services for the through trip to Twi- 
light. He led off saying, "It is a bit shady, but 
you can't miss it." 

"Is n't he a cheerful liar?" whispered Brute at 
my heels. 

A bit shady no more described the first hemlock 



APOSTASY OF A CHEERFUL LIAR 63 

grove we got into than Egypt in the plague. It 
was as black as a 'phone booth in a cellar. Out 
we would crawl into one semi-clearing, only to re- 
plunge into another pocket of darkness. Our 
guide struck a match now and then. 

After passing through a few sets of brambles, 
any one of which was adequate to deserve the name 
of thicket, I began to admire the sureness with 
which the boy led us on. But when we began to 
wander in a general sort of brambledom, I began 
to doubt. 

**How many thickets are there on this trip?" 
Brute asked. 

"Only the one," replied the guide with a shade 
less confidence. 

"Well, we haven't missed that then." Brute 
was evidently thinking my thoughts. The psy- 
chology of the moment was being shared by all 
three alike. For as we were about to penetrate 
the barrier for the third time in the manner of 
that son of Mother Goose who scratched out both 
his eyes, we halted simultaneously and without a 
word spoken. 

"The Park ought to be sort of over there,'* and 
our guide waved vaguely into the darkness, which 
was now unfeatured and complete. 

"I think it 's kind of over there," suggested 
Brute with a magnificent gesture. 

"I dunno but what it is," said the poor kid. 



64. THE CATSKILLS 

We spread out our map on the snow and I held 
the match. 

''You don't guess we 're on High Peak?" con- 
tinued the irrepressible ; " it looks as if it might be 
awful brambly there. ' ' 

"Oh, no, not on High Peak," the youngster re- 
plied solemnly. The match burned out. The 
darkness swooped upon us, three solemn asses 
grouped on all fours about the paper showing dully 
on the snow. I struck another on a board beside 
me. It was a finger-post, saying, ' ' To Glum Hill. ' ' 

"Sure, that 's the trail going backwards," ex- 
claimed the Cheerful One. "I knew we couldn't 
miss." 

"Of course not," interrupted Brute; "nobody 
could miss a trail that wanders around like this 
'un. But what I want to know is which side of 
that briar-patch we 're on now." 

The remainder of the crossing was performed 
with minor acrobatics, but performed. We trod a 
road once more with an exhalation of repose. 
When we had arrived at the entrance of the Park, 
we blessed our guide and sent him back. But not 
before Brute had made him say that one could 
miss the way. 

"It will purify his soul," said my companion 
later. Until then T had not heard him refer to 
that abstraction. It interested me. 



CHAPTER VI 

NATTY BUMPPO'S VIEW 

AND now we had arrived at a very agreeable 
stage of our pilgrimage. For a few days 
our goings and comings were to center upon the 
house of France, which in turn centered upon the 
kitchen stove. This black but ingratiating quad- 
ruped had its quarters in a sunny room from which 
other rooms also relating to the art of sustenance 
made way, one to the pantry, one to the cold 
larder, and one to the scene of dining. This 
benign monster 's capacity for white kindling must 
have seemed nothing short of devilish to the chop- 
per, but the vapors that it gave off were appositely 
celestial. Dishes that one in the world had learned 
to regard as common became in the hands of 
Madame France comestibles for the gods. And 
she became the bright star of our comparisons 
when we were again waited upon by the lesser 
housewives of the Catskills. Their most verdant 
efforts withered in the consequence. 

There is a zone still geographically extant where 
food can be obtained, which, in style of serving and 
genuineness of substance, dates back to the pas- 

65 



66 THE CATSKILLS 

toral era midway between the culinary dark ages 
of back-woods dyspepsia and the present period 
of automatic lunches and delicatessen dinners. 
This zone begins where a meal is the substance and 
not the shadow, as a dejeuner or a tea. It reaches 
its richest development in that backward region 
where milk is still derived from a cow, butter from 
a churn, and maple syrup from the maple tree. It 
can be recognized as such when the fresh but sim- 
ple viands of the poor are all put on the table at 
once. Unlike the caloric froth of an apartment 
breakfast, which can be wafted down the esopha- 
gus while the morning news is being digested, the 
breakfast of the gastronomic zone that I am de- 
scribing demands one's full powers. I defy any- 
body to mix printer's ink with real country cream 
and wild strawberries. 

The Catskills, particularly the dairying part of 
the Catskills, belongs in this zone of mediaeval but 
blessed nourishment. Time and again we found 
that the delicate mastery of bread-making, of 
cream-skimming, of poultry-slaying, of trout- 
broiling and berry-layer-caking, of venison-steak- 
ing and pork-chop-browning, of butter-churning 
and cheese-making and cider-brewing and apple- 
tarting — in short, the mastery of fundamental 
mysteries we found — was so complete that living 
threatened to be dying as well. I have seen Brute 
drive such a salient into a gooseberry tart as to 



NATTY BUMPPO'S VIEW 67 

render the chances of a future attack negligible. 
And, indeed, his customary division of anything of 
the sort gave rise to the important conundrum: 
Why is Mrs. France's house like her pie? The 
answer is exceedingly trivial and shall not deface 
a serious page. 

However, it was into an establishment such as I 
have hinted that we two did intrude at the hour of 
seven, the hour when most good Catskillers are 
thinking of bed. But the friendly people bestirred 
themselves for our comfort, and in short order 
Brute was discussing his favorite tobacco with the 
woodsman, while his wife was having us in dry 
socks. We amused them, it appeared, with an 
account of our journey from Clum Hill, and soon 
after had wished ourselves upstairs. He rests 
doubly well who lays a contented mind upon a 
smooth pillow. That night beneath the eiderdown 
brusque April was forgotten. A gentle ozone 
from the hemlock slopes breathed over us the balm 
of its tranquillity. 

We awoke to a world brilliant and fairly ringing 
with light. The cloud scroll had rolled up and 
liberated a sun long chafing to be free. Woods 
and valleys lay bright in the universal luster. 
Sunshine and snowshine and the white of birch- 
bark groves shimmered like a broad fountain of 
light, till the sedate firs were ready to dance too. 
Only if one climbed down in a ravine did he see 



68 THE CATSKILLS 

that the hemlocks retained some vestige of their 
gravity and that the sky was still true blue. 

It is because winter is so often dark that its 
name has a sinister sound. When we say that 
winter is coming we mean that we are going to 
have to rise in the dark, to have to witness the end 
of the day while we are far from home. The cold 
is not the objection. Sparkles from rows of 
varied icicles, tree limbs lit with their shell of ice, 
all the ecstasy of resplendent carnival, buoys our 
spirits above the most distressing zeros. Decem- 
ber would outliven May, given an equal brilliance. 
And so on that morning we were gaily tuned to 
any comedy, had Puck been there to present the 
way. 

Haines' Falls village is quadruply gifted. It 
stands at the head of the Kaaterskill Clove, at the 
brink of its own falls, opposite the Kaaterskill 
Falls, and is but sixty minutes ' walk from the edge 
of the old sea-cliff that overlooks the valley of 
the Hudson. The view from this cliff while not 
so inclusive as that from the Overlook, is rather 
more impressive if taken from the Mountain 
House. It is the view that Cooper commemor- 
ated, that Queen Victoria longed to see. (She 
said she did.) It is the view that made the Cats- 
kills famous. And knowing this, with the impetu- 
osity of the best sight-seers we hastened along the 
road to the Mountain House, in hopes of looking 



NATTY BUMPPO'5 ^TEW 69 

off into the neighboring States before the atmos- 
phere should become clouded with the lees of later 
hours — though, to be downright honest, the rav- 
ings of previous describers had somewhat taken 
off the edge of my expectation. 

If you will exhume the diaries, monographs, 
travelogs, and exhalations concerning the tre- 
mendous brink that we were approaching, you will 
shudder at it. All the diarists did. Every visitor 
who had had paper handy set his pen to distilling 
adjectives about it. On the map the elevation is 
set down at 2250 feet. But the \isitors re-ar- 
ranged that. They described the terrifying gulf 
below them. They depicted thunder-storms rav- 
ing incontinently, miles beneath. If they were 
artists they drew tolerable pictures of the sky 
into which they were thrust. They usually situ- 
ated it about four feet above their heads. If 
literary, they likened the Hudson to a thread of 
silver creeping like a tape-measure to the visible 
Atlantic. At least, Miss Martineau says she saw 
the Atlantic. And all the other unfortunates who 
could neither draw nor write reported what they 
thought, hurling towering adjectives from the cliff 
until one would think that the awful abyss (their 
favorite term ) would have got choked with them. 

Being fairly weU read up on this mass of 
memoranda, I was also fairly ready to be disap- 
pointed in the sight. I knew there must be some 



70 THE CATSKILLS 

sort of capacious hole in front of the hotel, but I 
had discounted the layers of thunder-storms ply- 
ing between one 's feet and the farms below. And 
yet — 

We had got Mrs. France to put us up a lunch, 
not wishing to be dinner-bound, thinking that after 
we had got through with the view we could go 
somewhere and enjoy the day. The road had 
brought us to the shining levels of the two small 
lakes, and then to the head of the Otis Elevating 
Eailway, which disposes of any of the old romance 
of getting to the summit. We walked along the 
board-walk in front of the pioneer hotel, stepped 
out on the overhanging rock, and looked. I could 
feel Brute looking as I was looking — deeply, thirst- 
ily. All the incontinent ravings were forgotten, 
blown away by the outburst of the view. And 
later, when we had sat down, the first thing I said, 
quite seriously, was : 

''I wonder why nobody ever told me about this, 
Brute." 

' 'Where was they to begin? " he very adequately 
replied. 

It is a curious thing that geologically, histori- 
cally, and emotionally our East represents age 
and our West youth. Geologically the Hudson 
Valley was an antique before the Colorado Canon 
had made a mark for itself. Historically New 
York State helped in the national councils a couple 




Haines' Falls 



NATTY BUMPPO'S VIEW 73 

of centuries before anyone even thought of Ari- 
zona Territory. Only yesterday did flannel shirts 
cease to be full dress in a land that could not be 
shocked. 

And the parallel holds between the two Grand 
Canons : for, since that first view, I shall always 
think of the great broad valley lying between the 
Berkshire ramparts and the Catskill cliff as the 
Grand Canon of the East. It fits the East so 
exactly. Instead of the Colorado gulf of splin- 
tered slopes, the abyss of painted splendors, you 
have a serene picture complete in three lines, sub- 
dued in tones of green and blue. The Colorado 
canon exalts with its divine rhapsody; the Hud- 
son Valley breathes celestial repose. Out West is 
violence of desire; here there is quiet of attain- 
ment. 

As we stood gazing over the river of civilization, 
with its valley green with farms and touched here 
and there with spires, I seemed to feel the presence 
of the unseen city at the end of the river, as well as 
companionship for the farmer in the field beneath. 
At my back rose the impressive forest. There 
were majestic distances, but the momentous qual- 
ity of the scene was the quiet and settled beauty 
of the level land between the two wide walls. How 
striking when compared to that Western seven- 
hued fantasy of isolation fresh from the hand of 
God. Those of us who have been bred to this may 



74 THE CATSKILLS 

visit tliat gorgeous and incredible wild, may sigh 
a while for the reckless freedom of those Western 
spaces. But we will return to the mellowed rich- 
ness of our East, the savor of which can be got no- 
where better than from that Catskill cliff. 

Sooner or later young blood gets to the stone- 
shying period of view-taking. There is no pros- 
pect under heaven so grand and so dignified that 
youth will not come to throwing rocks into it. 
Youth gives sentiment its due, but nothing to sen- 
timentality; and so, at about the time that old 
ladies would have begun to repeat how much they 
were being moved by the panorama, from our 
parapet Brute set to work trying to hit some of 
those farms below us with red shale. He had 
finished with creation couchant on a field of green, 
and thought it was time for a little something 
rampant. I could not have stood a companion 
puling and mouthing at every turn of the land- 
scape, so gladly I set out with him along the ledge 
that leads south from the hotel. 

This ledge brought us to a projection from which 
one's eye shot across the country a hundred miles 
at a wink. The day was too clear for the best 
effects. They say that the area of impression one 
gets from that ledge is all of ten thousand square 
miles when there is no haze, and if so we had the 
benefit of every square inch of it. The day was 
what the farmers call a weather-breeder, but it 



NATTY BUMPPO'S VIEW 75 

must have been breeding somewhere else. There 
was n't any weather visible, — no clouds, no hazes. 
The hills were stripped of atmosphere almost to 
nakedness. If other people have seen Mt. Wash- 
ington from that promontory, so did we, though 
I should hate to take an examination on its shape. 
An artist would have daubed his canvas with yel- 
lows and purples, I suppose; but for our duller 
eyes there seemed but endless white, variable 
green, and an infinite supply of blue. So still, so 
clear the air that the steam from a train ten miles 
away on the other side of the Hudson not only dis- 
played to us its lights and shadow, but we could 
see the reflection of its whiteness in the river. 
That is a statement of fact and not mere traveler's 
license. 

Through stunted spruces and small hemlocks we 
came to a path that took us up to the Kaaterskill 
House, a mammoth hotel set near the summit of 
this mountain. It was hawsered to the rocks as 
was the Overlook, and presented a broad invita- 
tion to the heavy gusts that have hurled themselves 
as yet in vain upon its white bulk. There were 
ladders to the roof, and we climbed. Though we 
had come but five minutes ' walk from the edge of 
the precipice, the quality of the view had. been 
completely changed. No longer did one get the 
unique sensation of looking down from the battle- 
ment of some stupendous castle. One saw only 



76 THE CATSKILLS 

the slope of evergreen leading to the unseen brink, 
and then far off a blue gulf. It was very fine still, 
but the difference was the same as that between 
talent and genius. The suddenness was lost, and 
with it went the thrill. 

But from this roof I had another and almost 
equally memorable sensation. It was on another 
morning, when the west wind was flowing strongly 
from a deep sky filled with great galleon-clouds 
that sailed in white fleets with hulls of distant 
gray. The sky was all in motion. The wind, 
though strong, was steady; and, looking down 
upon the green-crested ranges rolling out of the 
west, I had the distinct feeling that each ridge 
of mountain was a hurrying comber, curled, and 
about to break. Even the nearest shapes helped 
with the illusion. High Peak and Eound Top, 
viewed from that hotel, seemed like sublime break- 
ers just ready to topple over in a universal thunder 
of white foam. The distant Overlook looked as I 
have often seen breakers look from the seaward, 
hastening toward the plunge. I could feel the 
rush, feel the exhilaration. And, to complete the 
illusion of this tremendous ocean, the white plain 
stretched below like the wide surf of the spent 
wave, flinging itself upon the Berkshire beach. 
But the green waves never fell ; the great combers, 
advancing as if from some vast inland Pacific, got 
no nearer. The clouds sailed and the wind blew 



NATTY BUMPPO'S VIEW 77 

fresh on my cheek, but the tumult was petrified in 
its gigantic play. And there you may see it at 
any time that the sky is blue and the small spiral- 
fibered cedars bend to the east. 

For Brute and me the calm of our noon sun was 
utterly satisfactory. Lunch-time struck beneath 
the belt, and down we sat on the porch of this 
winter skeleton of summer fatness. How unreal 
the hotel seemed! Ten months of lonely cold and 
two of vivacious summer might breed some intro- 
spection in a house, as well as its own desert does 
in the Sphinx. But I was glad there were no peo- 
ple humming about. * ' Any place, ' ' I wrote later in 
my note-book, "is as good as new if you only are 
there out of season. ' ' A few days after I wrote : 
''People don't mind sharing an orchestral concert 
with the audience. Why should they prefer not to 
have a crowd with them before some impressive 
panorama?" There 's a note-book for you ! 

The great advantage of visiting inspiring scen- 
ery or talking with strong men is not what you 
get out of them, but what they draw out of you — 
the same thing, of course, but put in a more com- 
forting light. If you are keenly alive all men will 
interest and no scene will bore. There is no com- 
monplace of scenery. The dreariest desert flows 
with color, and the drought-driest pasture, silken 
with spider-webs at certain lights or musical with 
small life, can be a wonderland of delight. But 



78 THE CATSKILLS 

it does pay to liunt up the great. For, when the 
marvel is at last come upon, when you at last are 
struck to the very core of your being by the Bridal 
Veil Falls, by the Eapids of Niagara, or even by 
the October glories on this Wall of Manitou, your 
spirit overflows with an intenser life. You swim, 
for a moment at least, in the greatness about you, 
just as one who had talked with Lincoln would 
have to be more generous or more kind. The 
nobler the sight the nobler you are, for the time 
being. And this is the supreme worth of travel. 
The effects of such a valuable shock wear off. 
I have found people altogether despicable in an 
environment that should have produced saints. 
But, even if a man can't be known by the country 
that he keeps as well as by the company, he will 
know himself better if he submits himself to the 
play of Mother Nature upon his personality. On 
the curvature of our green globe there is a spot for 
every one more satisfying than any other, and if 
you will show me the spot I can to some degree tell 
you the man. Some tend to upland pastures, some 
to the deep woods, some take a suburban grass- 
plot, and some a room in the city. The only being 
I can 't conceive of is he who wants to perch on the 
side of the Grand Canon all his days. Even Dante 
was not big enough for that. All should travel 
some, if only as far as a man can walk in fifteen 
hours of a Sunday. Nothing will help to revise 



NATTY BUMPPO'S VIEW 79 

one's table of contents like a day a-foot. As we 
sat there in the flood of sunshine, devouring the 
lunch of the excellent Mrs. France (may she get a 
white stroke for every one she puts up) and indulg- 
ing in intermittent discourse, some things that 
Brute said made me quite sure that the above is 
true. 

If you could have seen that boy sprawling over 
three or four porch steps, half blinking in the light 
like a contented woodchuck, looking lazily out over 
the valley and letting his old black pipe draw 
his thoughts from him, you 'd never guess that 
they were thoughts. Neither would Brute have 
claimed that reputation for them. He did not 
crave that position. But those steady dark eyes of 
his had been set broad to see things true. Just 
because his good nature belied his ability to criti- 
cize, one got the impression that he wasn't as 
much interested in things as was the case. But I 
found that he had the habit of clinging to a string 
of ideas until he reached the ends. Then he tied 
a knot. He was evidently reaching for one of the 
ends when he said abruptly: 

"It 's funny how they lie. ' ' 

''Who?" 

"Oh! all the people who preach at you and 
teachers and copy-books. I was thinkin' of the 
copy-books and the way they made me write out 
'Business before pleasure' fifty times at a throw. 



80 THE CATSKILLS 

When I 'd get to the pleasure end of it there 
was n't any. I can't see as there 's much business 
connected with this goose-chase of ours, and yet I 
can't somehow feel as if I was losin' out." 

He smiled comfortably and then continued: 
*'I 've got a stack of ideas, more 'n I could use in 
a year at the garage. When I get home I '11 show 
'em a surprise. But I 'm going to find that copy- 
book writer first." 

* ' He was n 't so far wrong, ' ' I remarked. Brute 
transferred his gaze from the valley to me. 

"Then what in the devil are we doing sitting 
around in these mountains'? We 've been putting 
pleasure so far ahead of business that it isn't in 
the same day. We keep it up and keep it up ; and 
yet I can't see as your conscience is giving you 
much anguish." 

A laugh escaped me at his picture. 

"You 've mixed the meanings. The old-fash- 
ioned way was to hate your job, but let it take it 
out of you for ten or twelve hours a day and then 
heat up the scraps and call them pleasure. Now- 
adays the law cuts it down to eight hours of drudg- 
ery and sixteen of something else. But there are 
a lot of people like you and me who must have our 
pleasure first and all the time. And we get paid 
for it, too." 

"How do you suggest cashing in to-day's fun?" 
he asked with a little laugh. 



NATTY BUMPPO'S VIEW 81 

**You just suggested it yourself.'* I had to 
laugh, too, at his look of mystification. 

''Then I must be getting to be a mighty loose 
talker." 

''Ideas, man. You never get any ideas when 
you 're not enjoying yourself — at least, any valu- 
able ideas. It was n't all work that made Jack a 
dull boy — it was all drudgery did it. And I re- 
fuse to put drudgery before pleasure, and just now 
so did you. You said you were going to wake up 
your garage with your ideas. Just like Ford, 
maybe. You can't tell me that he stopped having 
pleasure when the whistle blew; now did he?" 

' ' Not punctual, ' ' Brute admitted. 

"He put pleasure first. Pleasure paid him. 
Pleasure always pays, if it is real." 

"What 's to tell," asked the boy, "whether 
you 're experiencin' a real pleasure or just being a 
slant-domed fan of gaiety I" 

That was a hard drive at my theory. We were 
both silent for a moment in the cascade of white 
light that poured upon the brooding forest. A 
short way off, some pines stood shining like can- 
delabra. There seemed no reason why the path 
of the future should not be plain, so abundant was 
the joy of living. Brute answered his own ques- 
tion: 

' ' I think I get you ; it 's this way. In your way 
of living there won't need to be anybody to do the 



82 THE CATSKILLS 

chores, for there won't be any chores to do. 
There '11 be enough people to have everybody do- 
ing what he likes and yet get everything done." 

' * And better done than now, ' ' I added ; ' ' for it 
will be done from the heart. That 's the only real 
fun — doing something from the heart. Call it 
business, if you like to fool the world. Or call it 
just plain pleasure, if you 're bold. You like your 
grease and monkey-wrenches, and I like something 
else ; but both of them would be abominable trades 
for a third man. And if coming out here in the 
wilds did n't do another thing for us but make us 
certain, it would be time well spent. But you 
found your ideas in addition." 

''And the money-end '11 come? Do you believe 
that this pleasure-business will bring in the money 
as sure as that old system of drudgery?" 

''Ford made his millions out of being happy. 
If he 'd stuck to business he 'd 've still been work- 
ing for a living. ' ' 

"But Ford 's Ford." 

"Well, you 're you, with just the same truths 
holding water as they did for Ford and all the rest 
of us in this good old United States that God and 
Thomas Jefferson planned out so well. Did they 
make you learn the Declaration of Independence 
in your school?" 

"That dope about life, liberty, and the pursuit 



NATTY BUMPPO'S VIEW 83 

of happiness?" Brute lit his pipe again. '*It 
never impressed us kids much." 

''That very dope is the whole thing. That 's 
the American contribution to this universe. Our 
American notion of pleasure is to follow out our 
bent, and our notion of happiness is having the 
liberty to follow out our pleasure. ' ' 

*'Well, there ain't so much happiness lying 
around, according to that," said Brute. 

"That 's true. Because there are mighty few 
who 've read their Declaration of Independence 
right. There are a million clerks keeping ledg- 
ers who secretly want to keep cows, a million 
milliners dreaming how happy they are going to 
be when they 've chewed off the last thread, five 
million unhappy school-teachers who don't know 
what that first sentence of the Declaration means." 

''Which is—?" 

** Healthy life, intelligent liberty, and the pur- 
suit of happiness — meaning happiness in your 
pursuit." 

I knew that Brute 's first puff was the end of the 
conversation, but his thoughts were burrowing 
deep still, and in that vast silence any talk seemed 
but trivial embroidery to the largeness of the day. 
The mountain seemed brooding over the plain, 
and the plain led one's fancy to the sea. But now 
their impersonal hugeness seemed less interesting 



84 THE CATSKILLS 

far than the glimpse I had had into the boy ^s heart 
beside me. And, as if in answer to my mood, he 
stretched and said : 

* * Seein ' big must make you think big. I wonder 
what we 'd have talked at if we 'd been sittin' on 
the Rockies." 



CHAPTER VII 

WHEN IS A WATERFALL? 

NOT when it is turned off, surely. Yet what is 
one to term the location of the fall that is 
off falling? Not a waterfall still ; that is mislead- 
ing. Not the where-it-ought-to-be-running-over- 
place-if-it-were-running ; that is a little inconven- 
ient for a sign-board. And yet, just see the pre- 
dicament into which the paucity of our vocabulary 
may throw a man who adheres to the truth. For 
instance, a summer visitor at the Laurel House — 
the hotel that is perched alongside the great 
Kaaterskill Falls — may very easily plunge a 
truthful attendant into a dilemma of this sort, 
simply because there is no word at hand to de- 
scribe an abrogated cataract. She may request to 
be shown the falls. What is he to do? 

If he replies that there are n't any, he is exposed 
to the indignation of a woman who considers that 
she is being trifled with. If, on the other hand, 
he leads her to the vacancy where the water should 
be falling but is n 't, he is again exposed to her in- 
dignation, this time because she considers that 
she has been trifled with. And yet, if, on the third 

85 



86 THE CATSKILLS 

hand (and this shows how preposterous the situa- 
tion is), he should tell her the truth — that it is n't 
time for the waterfall yet — she would complain to 
the management of his impertinence. 

To avert injustice being done either the water- 
falls or the management, one has only to regard 
the Catskill peculiarities of supply and command. 
The heavens supply, the proprietors command, 
and between the two the visitors are not deprived 
of their spectacle as they otherwise would be. For 
the Catskills receive a great deal of water, but let 
it all run off. There are only a few ponds, only 
small areas left of deep pine soil. From Novem- 
ber until March a cover of snow hoards up almost 
all the precipitation. In midspring this is re- 
leased with a gush. The country becomes one 
vast waterworks. Every inequality in the land is 
a gulley running with snow-drip. The brooks are 
noisy, the large streams leave their banks and 
wander about the lowlands. The highlands pour 
huge streams from every projection. Whatever 
is n't a cataract is a cascade in April; but by May 
the pace has become normal, by June the smaller 
rills are dry, by July the larger brooks are shrunk, 
and if August be dry one would have to carry 
water to the chief waterfalls to make them go. 

Now, carrying water to waterfalls may be a 
shade less absurd than carting coals to Newcastle, 
but it is an expensive mode of entertaining summer 



WHEN IS A WATERFALL? 87 

guests. Yet many of these guests have come to 
the hotels in response to the lavish advertisement 
of the beauty of the waterfalls. Hence the hotel 
proprietors are face to face with a trying situa- 
tion: How to live without waterfalls but not 
without guests. They meet the situation trium- 
phantly by turning off the one and keeping the 
other. They save up the waterfalls by doing with- 
out them at night and at other times when they 
are not of much use, and are thus able to provide 
a life-size cataract at certain hours when some- 
body happens along who can afford one. 

Consequently, everybody who can't visit the 
Catskills when Nature is running naturally can 
get almost the same effect when she is run by hand. 
Even in an average summer there is a surprising 
amount of water still foot-free in the wooded val- 
leys, and every few years one of those wet seasons 
arrives when Neptune himself would be quite 
proud of the results. 

On that day when Brute and I turned by luck 
to come back by the brink of the Kaaterskill Clove, 
the only flood in our thoughts was the flood of sun- 
shine, and the only fall was the one we were trying 
not to take down to the bottom of the ravine. We 
went in a southeasterly direction, at first, from the 
hotel to a bare place called the Palenville Overlook, 
which showed the ravine to splendid advantage. 
Then, picking our way along the slipperinesses, we 



88 THE CATSKILLS 

reached Sunset Eock, a magnificent sort of prom- 
ontory-place to which we shifted our allegiance 
from all previous outlooks. Opposite, the great 
side of the Clove rose in our faces. Shadows fell 
in heavy blocks along the ravine, and white cas- 
cades fell with inverted spires in three places down 
the confronting wall. 

Here the spell of winter was laid upon us. A 
chickadee in some distant dell reminded us of life ; 
everything else was radiant marble or dreaming 
wood. Afternoon in the shadow of Eound Top 
was well advanced, and the air had begun to drift 
down the Clove with its weight. But there was 
no wind. The stillness of the whole day and the 
radiance of it will always be in my memory, an 
actual presence. Only a few times in a life would 
there likely be anything so stable, so impressive, 
as that day-span of shining quiet ; and it was just 
my luck that I had been able to spend it in such 
a memorable place with a genuine, fine spirit to 
enjoy it with. 

At last the cold began to search us, and, trying 
to fix the crystal panorama in our memories, we 
moved on. Bright finger-tips of cloud rising in 
the west were beginning to foretell the morrow. 
The witch that weaves the storm-cloud for the 
Catskills had been all that day preparing, and 
these were the first shadows of the veiled spirits 
who were to do her bidding. 




Photograph by J R. Allison 



Creht of the Kaaterskill 




I'h..t..t;r.,i.h l.y J H. AlHs.m 



Kaaterskii.i> Fali-s 



WHEN IS A WATERFALL? 91 

The swiftly changing skies of mountain-lands 
and their effects upon the distances are the most 
beautiful of all the highland scenes. In the Cats- 
kills particularly is this so. The Kaaterskill 
Clove is the largest causeway out of the great cita- 
del. Its sides are flung wide enough to stage the 
parade of storms, and in many seasons it is more 
impressive than far deeper gorges, simply be- 
cause of the exceeding richness of the Catskill 
skies. The Rockies swim at the bottom of a sea 
of incredible clearness; the Cuban Mountains 
wrap themselves in sultry vapors of rare tints; 
but the Catskills, the Adirondacks, and the White 
Mountains are situated in a current of the atmos- 
phere, continental in its sweep, hastening as it 
nears them, which provides an ever-changing 
pageant of light and shadow, storm and shine. 
One day will fairly pierce all distance with its 
brightness, and the next soften the ranges into an 
intimate neighborliness. The empty blue of a 
summer's morning will tower with thunder-castles 
by noon, and by evening all will be fair once more, 
the farther valleys rich with a thousand shades 
worn by the humidity. In midwinter, in early 
spring, in noonlight, in moonlight, and at dawn, 
there is always some combination of light and 
shade and forest beauty to make one pause. 

From the Sunset Rock it is not far to the Falls 
of the Kaaterskill. Stealing to the edge, which 



92 THE CATSKILLS 

was an extremely unobstructed slide of ice, we 
looked down. Despite the continued cold, there 
was a fair volume of water falling into its vase 
of ice. This vase was over a hundred feet high, 
irregular at the top, and shaded from clear white 
into yellows and deep blues. And always the 
water poured into the vase as into a drinking-horn 
that would never be filled. 

A stairway climbs down into the wide bowl that 
the fall has carved in the reluctant rock, and down 
it we slid at our peril. Snow-dust, ice, frost blown 
from the cup's white rim, whole palisades of ice, 
were only too eager to abet our descent. The go- 
ing down to Avernus was as nothing for ease. 
And the temptation was to take one 's eye from the 
footing, to gaze into that fascinating twilight 
vision of descending white. At the bottom we 
safely looked and looked until the amphitheater of 
giant icicles had faded from blue to gray-green 
and into the colorless filmy gray of night. Then 
we felt at liberty to go, frozen, hungry. 

The head of the Kaaterskill Clove is crowned 
with falls. There are half a dozen major ones and 
a score of minor. The Haines' Falls achieves a 
descent of 240 feet in two leaps, and as much more 
in a few succeeding. They are beautiful from the 
foot of the gorge, and impressive in spring or after 
a heavy rain in summer. Like the Kaaterskill, 
they are carried on in summer on the instalment 



WHEN IS A WATERFALL? 93 

plan, being dammed until a spectacle has accumu- 
lated, the theory being that half a fall is no better 
than none. Brute and I were very lucky. We 
saw them after a winter of continued cold, when 
the accumulation of ice was exceptional. Again 
we saw them after a heavy snow had softened the 
portcullis of icicles and draped the sharp edges of 
the rock with curving lines of bewildering beauty. 
And once more I saw them in a season of much 
rain, when the roar and spray at the bottom grew 
into a contending melee of naked forces. The 
heavy foot of the descending torrent thrust on one 
the horror of mere brutal insistence. 

In the vicinity of Haines' Falls there is a water- 
fall for every person, one for every mood. The 
Bastion, the Buttermilk, the La Belle, are some 
for those who like their waterfalls to begin with 
B. You can follow up any brook only a little way, 
and you are certain to come upon mossy grottos, 
cool, damp, and very lonely, where you can have 
a waterfall to yourself. Or you can linger around 
the more famous sights and collect the exclama- 
tions of the tourist arrivals. If you wish for love- 
liness, visit these places in early May. The bushes 
will be in their new greens, the trees beginning to 
bud, the first flowers whitening the woods that are 
themselves so delicately dappled with the fresh 
foliage. And as you come upon one exuberant 
cascade after another you will wonder how old 



94 THE CATSKILLS 

Earth, replete with merriment, could affect you 
drearily again. It is worth while going long dis- 
tances to fill one 's memory with scenes to aid one 
in harsh seasons. 

The reverse of the spring gladness has its 
charm, as well. It comes at that pause of the sea- 
son after the summer heat and before the autumn 
rains. Then steal up to the Kaaterskill and sit 
at the foot of the thread of water that falls into 
the quiet bowl. The shrunken stream only 
whispers now, but in the stillness you can think 
back to the time when you heard it roaring. It 
seems now more likable, if less splendid. And 
the woods are thinking it all over. Leaves fall 
one by one, and here and there shafts of light 
shine down where the woods were lately dark. 
A maple gleams among the beeches, which are 
growing yellow, and the hemlocks are full of the 
sense of coming winter. If you sit quite still 
you may see a thrush drink from the pool or hear 
the chirp of some passing bird. But never a song 
now. Winter is on the way. A red squirrel is 
busy on the upper bank, and the bell of the dis- 
tant train tells you that there were once people 
here. Otherwise you have only the Falls and the 
weight of endless time. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THAT ELUSIVE VAN WINKL.B 

THE Kaaterskill Falls has not existed a great 
while. The region from which the stream 
flows was recently the favorite resting-place of 
Manitou. And, since he did not like to be dis- 
turbed while resting, he advised the Indians when 
hunting not to intrude upon his holier ground. 

Once, however, a reckless brave followed his 
quarry into Manitou 's preserve. Having pene- 
trated, he looked around. He came upon some 
gourds hung up in a tree, and stole one. Then he 
fled. In his flight he stumbled, letting fall the 
gourd. Immediately a torrent sprang from the 
spot, and bore off the brave with it. When it 
took the great leap at the present Falls, the Indian 
was slain and his body was carried down into the 
Hudson. Since then the stream has kept on flow- 
ing. 

The moral to be drawn from this occurrence is 
that the geology book must not be trusted too 
implicitly. There are a goodly number of such 
events that have transpired in the CatsMlls. The 

95 



96 THE CATSKILLS 

wall itself from which these mountains get their 
fame was erected by Manitou to protect the valley 
country from the evil spirits living toward the 
west. The weather witch and the extreme ac- 
tivity of the other spirits who dwelt in this vicin- 
ity have left their stamp (and considerable gos- 
sip) on this country. It is to these essential be- 
ginnings that we should turn when we want to 
learn something. The soil of folk-lore in America 
is very thin. 

In his faithful narrative about one good man 
Washington Irving has helped to make the Cats- 
kills equal to their opportunity. With every 
apology to Manitou, I must confess that the Cats- 
kills are famous rather on account of Irving. It 
is to Irving and not to the Great Spirit that the 
Catskill innkeepers should give thanks for their 
bank-accounts. Yet the late Rip van Winkle, the 
vanished Union Hotel, the lost race of Doolittles, 
even the fabled existence of one Washington Irv- 
ing — what tribute do these progenitors of Cats- 
kill fortunes receive? This was the query in the 
back of my mind that morning as I came down to 
breakfast. I resolved to search, to see if the 
chief legend of this part of America had any repu- 
tation in its own habitat. 

The hot-cake summons had wakened us to find 
a snow-storm at our windows. Our crystal yes- 
terday had been a brilliant interlude between the 



THAT ELUSIVE VAN V^INKLE 97 

cycles of sterner stuff of which so much Catskill 
weather is made. 

"It isn't so monstrous springlike," remarked 
Brute, looking at the thermometer, which regis- 
tered twelve. 

"I Ve seen it a heap worse," Mrs. France ad- 
mitted. "In father's day there 's been four feet 
of snow on the level in April. And the wind 
comes down these north cloves like out a bel- 
lows. ' ' 

"Yes, yes," chimed in the old man, for we were 
now safely embarked upon his dearest topic. 
"And once, on the 13th of December, we had three 
feet of snow plumb on the level. But it 'most 
went by Christmas. I calcalate this is goin' to 
last." 

For the entire period of breakfast — a consider- 
able interval — we enjoyed meteorological remin- 
iscence. Even the ordinary native's memory is 
stout when it comes to such important matter as 
the drought of ten years gone this May, or the 
early frost of nineteen years this coming August. 
And our entertainer had no ordinary memory. 
There wasn't a thunder-shower, a drop in tem- 
perature, a heavy dew in the past, but now moved 
the old man to awe and anecdote. I had made the 
strategic mistake at the outset of being interested. 
When I was sufficiently up in hot waves and had 
had my fill of freshets, I was too well committed 



98 THE CATSKILLS 

as listener. When we had reviewed the floods 
we came to the whirlwinds. 

There was the thrilling story of Nicholas Bau^s 
barn carried over a cliff or a county — I can't re- 
member which — by a tornado. It had come from 
Sullivan County — the tornado, not the barn — and 
passed on by way of the Mountain House, its 
black trunk striking the ground, the sky a robin 's- 
egg blue and the air full of bits of leaves as if they 
had been put through a coffee-grinder — ''and a 
woman praying that she be saved was struck by 
that there swaying trunk and killed." Well, the 
tornado passed off to make room for a blizzard, 
and when we had finished up that and the Indian 
summers, ground-hog days, and remaining ex- 
cesses of the local climate, I was able to engineer 
the conversation to the topic of my desired inves- 
tigation. 

''Vreeland," I suggested, ''will you stroll down 
with me to Rip van Winkle 's village 1 You ought 
to do a mile for every twelve cakes." 

"Rip van Winkle," he repeated in a fog-bound 
sort of way. ' ' Rip van Winkle 's village ? Funny 
name. Do you know him I" Can you imagine 
a Fiji-Islander trying to orientate himself when 
you mention New York? Brute's head was both- 
ered in the same way. 

"My dear galoot!" I exclaimed, amazed. 
"Have you never read it?" 



THAT ELUSIVE VAN WRINKLE 99 

' < Oh ! If it 's a story, maybe I have. There 's 
a lot of things a fellow does he don't care to re- 
member. What 's hurtin' you so?" 

*' Every summer half a million people visit these 
hills partly on account of that story. It gives 
them a distinction other hills don't have. And I 
don't doubt that twenty million school children 
talk of Irving each winter." 

''That 's nothing,'* broke in Brute, quite on 
base again. ''Forty million children talk about 
Ty Cobb summer and winter, yet I don't believe 
that you know whether he 's a pitcher or a catcher. 
But you might tell me the Eip tale. ' ' 

"Some day," I said severely, "the American 
public may welcome its great pitchers and greater 
writers with an equal interest. As for the tale, 
I '11 have to read it to you. It 's all in the way 
that Irving tells it. Mrs. France '11 lend us her 
copy. ' ' 

But Mrs. France didn't have a copy, although 
she had heard of the legend. It was n't the day 
for the library to be open, which suited me ex- 
actly, for it gave me an excuse tor discovering 
van Winkle 's status in his native village of Palen- 
ville. Accordingly we set out — much to the sur- 
prise of the weather historian, who had thought 
up a couple of good hail-storms to tell us — and in 
half an hour were descending the deep and nar- 
row glen of the Kaaterskill Clove into which we 



100 THE CATSKILLS 

had looked the day before from Sunset Eock. 

To-day there was no looking up. Evenly, 
steadily the small flakes fell. Evidently this was 
to be no affair of flurry, sun, and flurry. The 
last words we had heard from the weather gentle- 
man were: ''I calcalate you boys had better be 
careful. It looks to me just like it looked before 
that big storm January twenty year — '* But 
Palenville was only four miles from Twilight 
Park, and we had all the day for plodding through 
the worst that might happen. 

The north slopes of the High Peak ranges that 
make the south wall of the Clove are devoted to 
cottage colonies grouped about their nuclear ho- 
tels — Sunset Park Inn, Twilight Park Inn, and 
Squirrel Inn. From these parks there are to be 
enjoyed views of the remote plain, sometimes 
cameo-clear through the nearer frame of moun- 
tain-shoulder, sometimes swimming in a half- 
tropical blueness beyond the forest-green. Be- 
tween the ranges runs the road, and from it, look- 
ing back, you get a very comical picture in clear 
weather of the inns with their satellite cottages 
clutching to the hillside. Their steep roofs and 
projecting porches convey the idea of huddled 
panic. One almost expects to hear them shriek 
in their obvious fear of sliding to the bottom. 

That snowy day, however, the picture was soft- 
ened. Empty and nearly veiled, they resembled 



THAT ELUSIVE VAN WINKLE 101 

a flock of birds asleep. The bottom of the Clove 
looked too far away to be afraid of. 

On our side of the ravine gravity had been ac- 
tive. A part of the road had slipped away to a 
less dizzy level. I found that nearly every winter 
some part said farewell, and that every spring it 
was rather the custom than otherwise to remake 
some portion of the highway to take the place of 
the departed. The gulf it slips into is about 
six hundred feet deep. It will require a good 
many roads to fill it up. Occasionally a boulder 
from higher up the mountain cavorts to the bot- 
tom. And at any time in the spring one may have 
a rock as big as an elephant-cage bound lightly 
across the road on the way down. For mountains 
put together so loosely, it is a wonder that they 
last so long. And still more wonderful that the 
State can maintain roads of such excellence in 
a country perpetually besieged by flood and frost. 
But the lessons of the Appian Way have been well 
learned by the contractors; the ancient Eomans 
might well point with pride to the triumphs of 
their pupils. It restores faith in contractors to 
see a Watling Street promenading across a wil- 
derness. Even through the Adirondack wilds, 
where the contractor might have escaped with an 
inferior product, he has laid a foundation for last- 
ing praise. State work means perfect work — in 
the Department of Highways of New York. 



102 THE CATSKILLS 

About half way down we came to the ravine 
leading in from the left which invited us to view 
the Kaaterskill Falls in ermine. But we kept on 
the wide and winding way, crossed the bridge, and 
yielded to the temptations on neither hand. It 
cannot be so easily done in spring, when the call 
of falling waters commands you to at least one 
look. Even on a melting day in winter the at- 
mosphere of this descent is thick with waterfalls. 
One is at a loss to imagine how all the water gets 
to the top, for it rains only four or five days in 
the week — in spring. 

The explanation probably is in the blotting-pad 
forest. The leaf-mold, the mosses, the ferns, the 
trees, themselves living reservoirs, the blanket of 
snow — all these influences stay the flood in spring 
and moisten the lips of August drought. The 
Catskills woods have had a narrow squeak. If 
the State had not acquired its territory when it did, 
the misfortune of a denuded forest would have 
become a stark reality instead of a peril that is 
passing. On account of the eternal possibility of 
fire that peril is never wholly past, and the man 
who visits this region either in spring wetness or 
in summer dryness realizes that this charming 
mountainland would be only a mudhole or a desert 
if left to the mercy of the alternate seasons. Even 
to-day whole private mountainsides are being un- 
scientifically slashed. It is unfortunate that in 



THAT ELUSIVE VAN WINKLE 103 

this case the crimes of the fathers are visited upon 
the visitors. Let us hope that brimstone makes 
a hotter fire than brush. 

However callous one may grow to waterfalls 
in this region, there is a charming glen just after 
you pass Wild Cat Ravine, called Hillyer's, which 
houses a fall called the Fawn's Leap. The story 
is harrowing. A hunted deer came with her fawn 
to the opposite bank of the deep pool. There was 
no escape. The doe made the leap successfully, 
but was compelled to witness in anguish her off- 
spring spring off, only to land, alas ! in the pool, 
where it swam around, or so the story goes, for 
a couple of days. The name, without the story, 
is really fitting for an exquisite waterfall, and a 
great improvement on Dog's Hole, by which it 
formerly was known. An appropriate name is 
half the pleasure in a bit of scenery, and the mo- 
tive legend, in an Irving 's hand, may at any mo- 
ment frame it in immortal prose. It is not the 
height of mountains that matters : Olympus is but 
little higher than these hills. 

On that snowy morning we were full of the elec- 
tric atmosphere. We cared nothing for side- 
glens. We were our own fawns, having run a 
good portion of the way down. The snow was not 
yet an impediment, only an invitation ; the flannel- 
cakes warmed our blood; the grade was steep. 
One strip of the splendid gorge, however, im- 



104 THE CATSKILLS 

pressed us to a walk. On either side the cliffs 
rose sheer into the snow haze. Even in summer 
this half mile just above Palenville is not made 
entirely gentle by the sun. You see Coliseum ter- 
races, stark ledges, tree-clad gulfs, and then the 
first cottages of Palenville — just the touch of hu- 
manity needed to offset the aloofness of the Clove. 

Palenville, with its attractive white houses, its 
rushing stream, so near the mountains, so con- 
venient to the plain, is a place to be thoughtfully 
recommended for its geography, its incitement to 
art, but not for its devotion to classic literature, 
at least the American classics. We were now 
hot upon the trail of Irving, and at the first door, 
I proposed to give tongue. The first door hap- 
pened to be a hotel's. It seemed closed, but led 
us into a bar-room with tables piled with chairs. 
A busy-looking man poked his head in at our 
knock, and I said: 

''Do you happen to have a Eip van Winkle 
handy?" 

''The bar 's closed," he said quickly, and with- 
drew. So did we, but slowly, being a bit crumpled 
with laughter. The hunt was on. 

Opposite the hotel was a new house in the 
Dutch style, tiles, in the chimney and all; but the 
rest of the place spoke of no great antiquity. The 
latticed windows and gable fronts, the weather- 
cocks and the antique Inn of the great Tale had 



THAT ELUSIVE VAN WINKLE 105 

vanished with the colonists who owned them. I 
next made my inquiry of a woman. 

"Sure!" she exclaimed. ''I know what you 
mean. But it burnt down last year. The ruins 
is up the next hollow about a mile." 

I explained that all I needed was a copy of the 
book for a few minutes. 

"Book — book? I don't know as there 's any 
book about it. But the Rip van Winkle burnt 
down last year. The ruins — " 

"Yes," admitted the fifth lady we bespoke. 
"The summer people talk an awful lot about the 
man, considering he never existed, and if I re- 
member correct that book you mention 's lying 
about the house somewhere. But I don't know 
where it 's got to now." 

The literary investigation progressed. Nearly 
everybody had heard of Rip. Joe Jefferson had 
given the play once in the village. Some had 
heard of Irving, but nobody could put their hands 
on the "Sketch Book." One lady got so inter- 
ested that she sent Helena up to the back closet 
to look, while I answered her questions : 

"Yes, I 'm just borrowing it to read to my 
friend here. He has never heard the story, 
which is about your own village. I dare say no- 
body else here has, either. You can't show me the 
tree under which Nicholas Vedder, your land- 
lord, used to sit. You can 't tell me, likely, where 



106 THE CATSKILLS 

Dame van Winkle, who died of scolding a peddler, 
is buried. Not one of your boarding-houses has 
named itself the 'Union Hotel.' If Irving should 
inquire for himself here, he would n 't get a word 
of welcome. He couldn't get his check honored, 
although it is his own hero who brings the tourists 
through. In the long run it is n 't cats nor kills 
that keep the crowd: it 's poetry. Poets praise 
and proprietors appropriate. Look at Words- 
worth's little lakes; think of the crop of tourists 
that Longfellow raises on Evangeline's bare 
meadow. And yet, this degenerate village — " 

Well, of course I did n 't say all that to the de- 
fenseless lady, not even when Helena came back 
from the closet without the book. But I thought 
a good deal of it as I turned away in the snow. 
How often I have inquired abroad for a great man 
in the vicinity of his greatness, and have had to 
go farther afield to find him. The exact quantity 
of honor done a prophet in his own country can 
be reduced to a formula: the lack of interest in- 
creases in intensity the nearer one gets to the 
center of inspiration. Never inquire for an ap- 
preciation of a lighthouse at its base. 

Palenville is not unique. Indeed, I am not sure 
that Irving ever visited the place, and almost cer- 
tainly there was no real Rip, though van Winkle 
is a common name. Brute and I found our vol- 
ume, and our search had so whetted his appetite 



r. 





HhotcKraph by CO. Hiclcelmann 



Profile Near Palen'ville 



THAT ELUSIVE VAN WINKLE 109 

for the story that his enjoyment of it was very 
genuine. Indeed, it was he who insisted on roving 
up into the little clove that (in order to be as con- 
fusing as possible) the neighborhood calls Sleepy 
Hollow. There is the hollowed stone where 
Eip's bed was, the amphitheater where the game 
of nine-pins went on, and the little ravine that 
goes dry in summer, just as Irving described 
them. 

Our visit to Palenville was vastly more produc- 
tive, however, than any but Chance had in mind. 
We had just brought our pursuit of Rip to a sat- 
isfying close, and were seeking about for a meal to 
reinforce our climb back to the plateau, when we 
slid into the agreeable clutches of an old gentle- 
man who might have been Rip himself except for 
the completeness of his attire. He was quite 
abrupt and vigorous for age, and after our first 
question beckoned to us. We followed at a good 
pace, coming to a long, white-painted house. 

*'Now," he said, turning jerkily, ''I understand 
what you boys want. You want a little solid food 
and some mental nourishment; but no liquids, 
eh?" 

'*If you have some schnapps, sir," suggested 
Brute, who had absorbed his Irving. 

<<My grandfather sold schnapps on this very 
site, young man. This house used to be the only 
inn in Palenville. Even as late as 1860 there were 



110 THE CATSKILLS 

only two taverns here and eighteen dwellings. I 
used to work up at the wool factory. And my 
father worked at the old mill in the Clove. And 
it was his father who came here soon after Jona- 
than Palen, for the tannery business. Up the 
Clove there 's the site yet of the tannery, right 
near the Profile Eock. Oh, it was a fine country 
in my day ! That was when the artists came, the 
first ones, in the year before the war. No summer 
people here then except artists. But this is cold 
hospitality. Come in, come in." 

''Ain't he a rare old bird!" whispered Brute, 
as the old man bustled around, giving directions 
as to how to cut the bread and coax the fire. In 
a few minutes we were seated at his table and 
our education recommenced. 

*'You know, the Dutch got on well with the 
Indians — you knew that, of course — for two rea- 
sons : they bought furs from them, and the Indians 
were a clever lot, not like the Indians you read 
about, but an organized gang. They lived in 
houses instead of tents, and had congresses, and 
their women voted; you knew that, of course. 
But the Dutch would trade in whisky, and Esopus, 
down below here, got burnt a couple of times on 
account of drunken Indians. Sometimes the set- 
tlers would have to all go to the big towns while 
their homes were being burnt. But back they 'd 
go, when the spell was over. Then came the wars, 



THAT ELUSIVE VAN WINKLE 111 

Dutcli-Englisli and Frencli-English and American- 
English. You know that, of course." 

This time, I hastened to say that I did. 

"Catskill became quite a place. They say Hud- 
son himself stopped there at the mouth of the 
creek, and when dad drove me down there seventy 
years ago it was still a place of its own. It had 
its paper, the ' Catskill Packet, ' and its steamboat 
communication, and through it went all the famous 
visitors for the Mountain House — you know that, 
of course. Yes, sir; those were days. Every- 
body said Charley Beach was crazy to perch that 
hotel on a edge of a precipice. But it 's still there, 
ain't it?" 

That was a queer but fascinating meal. The 
Catskill country is full of old men — a testimonial 
for the climate. Even Robert Juet, who sailed 
under Hudson, remarked that, and also that they 
were a ''very loving people." We found the old 
men very sprightly in memory, very keen over 
their hobbies. Brute and I had listened to a 
weather enthusiast all breakfast-time, and our 
lunch was partaken with genealogy. I learned 
not only about the Indians, the Dutch, the later 
comers in general, but in detail about John Sax, 
Fred Layman, Louis Wetzel, famous hunters all. 
Our host seemed delighted to find a couple of 
fresh listeners "with good acoustic properties," 
as Brute summed up the situation. We had no 



112 THE CATSKILLS 

chance whatever in the conversation, but we 
wanted none. Indeed, the flow of history, imper- 
fect perhaps but marvelously well remembered, 
was astonishing, and left me with a very different 
impression of Palenville and the region round. 

If one will only let his imagination build the 
past for him while his feet are treading the pres- 
ent, a walking trip in the Catskills becomes a 
heart-warming affair. You realize the Indian era 
with its sudden forays from the forest ; the era of 
the first straggling hunters. Then you find com- 
ing in quicker succession the tanners, the lumber- 
men, the brave homesteaders, who people the ra- 
vines and lift the paintless and perishing back- 
woods settlements from the plane of romance to 
that of business. One has Irving and Cooper and 
Parkman and a myriad lesser magazinists to turn 
to. One has also the patriarch still clinging to 
the remoter post-offices. An inquiry, a word of 
sympathy, will uncork the past, and you can drink 
with age in memories of any vintage. 

We came out from our nesting with "the rare 
old bird" to find the April storm trying to out- 
snow December. There was three ways back : the 
easy Clove road, the difficult trail straight up the 
southern bluffs and along the top, and the winding 
road up Sleepy Hollow. This last we chose. 

The original spelling of travel is travail, mean- 
ing a devilish hard job. We climbed and panted, 



THAT ELUSIVE VAN WRINKLE 113 

slipped and travailed. Snow is generally re- 
garded as a light substance which an artistic 
Providence spreads over a winter landscape to 
make it romantic. But let me assure you that 
snow is a mineral, and minerals weigh. After 
an hour I felt like a striking coal-heaver. But 
Brute, whose idea of the proper way to conduct an 
exhausting operation is to get it through with, 
seemed tireless. At length a workman passed 
us. 

''It 's only about two miles," he replied to our 
question. 

A mile is about as poor a measure of distance 
as any yet invented. The European method of 
estimating the time you '11 consume is less con- 
fusing. There is no such thing as a wilderness 
mile. It may lie up a mountain or across a swamp. 
And there wasn't any such thing for us, appar- 
ently. After an interminable period we met a 
second workman, and in a thoughtless moment put 
the same question. 

''Oh! About two miles," he said. 

"Fine," said Brute; "we haven't lost a yard." 

The whole road seemed trained to deception. 
There is a turn part way up where one comes 
opposite the Mountain House. On a clear day it 
looks close enough to smite with David's pebble. 
Even through the snow it didn't seem so far. 
Then the road shied off from the ravine, and 



114 THE CATSKILLS 

leaped up vast slopes like a wounded gazelle, quite 
as if it had forgot the Mountain House. Just as 
I was ready to announce that where we were was 
as good a place to die in as any, Brute turned 
around, leaned back against the road we were 
mounting, — or at least he could have, — and lit his 
pipe. 

''Did you ever hear — ?'* he began. And, as I 
had n't, he told me. It was probably the fun- 
niest story those virgin woods had ever listened 
to. Certainly it was a story that might have been 
imprudent in a nunnery. But Brute's telling 
brought no blush to the white snow. The humor 
of it lit up the gray weariness that was falling 
upon me, as he doubtless intended. When a man 
is plodding on his brain goes in circles, and during 
that afternoon whenever that tale came round I 
laughed, and, laughing, was refreshed. From 
then on we felt less the pull of the deepening snow, 
and confidences made for the quickening of com- 
radeship, yet instinctively aware of the fact that 
there is a certain bloom of delicacy that may never 
be rubbed off if the finest friendship is to endure. 

At twilight we stumbled into the France kitchen, 
snow-logged but content. The day stood high in 
my favor, one leg resting on the solid satisfac- 
tions of research in Palenville, the other on the 
new view permitted into the spacious heart of my 
road-partner. 



■CHAPTER IX 

STONY CLOVE 

OUR castle in Twilight Park, with Mrs. France 
to send us forth of a morning with a sort 
of culinary godspeed and with her father to receive 
us at night with the welcome of open fireplace 
and hunter's tale — this cozy castle of ours de- 
tained us until the snows gave up their siege and 
the roads lay smoking in the April sun. It was 
a well equipped center from which to sally. 
There was High Point to climb. There were the 
Wildcat and Santa Cruz ravines to explore. There 
was a marvelous point of view, discovered and 
Cooperized with the name of Hawkeye by Miss 
Clara Atlee, a ledge about two miles south along 
the eastern parapet, giving the valley view from a 
lair of wilderness. Find it if you can. I shall not 
give more details, for the explorer's sake or its 
own. Also beware of the bears. Then near by 
there is a bit of standing room only, whence you 
look down into an amphitheater of trees for which 
much of the Hudson Valley is the stage. There 
were the walks along the ridge, with the views 
from Clum Hill and the Onteora Park district to 

115 



116 THE CATSKILLS 

be looked over, and all the details of Manitou's 
best architect, whose work in the broad region 
capitaled by the Kaaterskill House was rich in 
surprise. 

As Brute and I loafed about from place to 
place, we realized with the utmost satisfaction that 
we were n't seeing everything. In fact, for every- 
body who travels, I judge that those days of old- 
fashioned touristry are over. No more will men 
and women run around Europe gulping down 
cathedrals at the rate of two an hour. The silli- 
ness of absorbing mere numbers of things ended 
with the era that closed July 31, 1914. Baedeker 
went out with the lights of Eheims. There are 
fewer treasures now, but we will learn to treasure 
them more. For us Americans, particularly, it is 
a salutary lesson. 

If one of those old-style travelers should come 
to Haines' Falls, what a fortnight of trotting he 
would have. He would be confronted by the same 
old dilemma : fourteen courses of scenery and dys- 
pepsia, or three and a good digestion. Of course 
it is entirely possible to do the hundred miles of 
trails, to see the scores of waterfalls, to mark off 
on a list all the noted sights as viewed and got out 
of the way, to take a thousand photographs. 
There are names of places — Lemon-Squeezer, 
Druid Kocks, Elfin Pass, Fairy Spring, all of 
which happen to be quickly available from the 



STONY CLOVE 117 

Kaaterskill — that would make the usual nurse- 
maid water at the mouth to have a picnic in, with 
all the extras; trampled ferns, pickle-jars, and 
papers strewn around. But I beg of you to take 
your time. Inspect the great rocks of puddin'- 
stone with white plums baked in the brown dough 
in prehistoric ovens and then laid away in the 
glacial epoch to cool. Sit down on the great cliffs 
(not created primarily to carve your name on) 
and look off to sea — in your imagination. This 
great parapet was once a marine bluff. Against 
it surged tides so impetuous, upon it beat storms 
so tremendous, that our halcyon era must seem 
the Indian summer of its content. Most of all, 
look closely at the ankle-deep moss-mounds where 
you sit, each one a forest in miniature, with tiny 
ravines, bold ranges, and deserts ringed with 
green. 

However much the gospel of work must be prac- 
tised for our deepest satisfaction, it is he who 
obeys the idler's creed who enjoys the riches of 
nature. He who runs may read, but not every 
one who reads remembers and still less is able to 
grasp the full measure of the countryside speed- 
ing past. There is a wealth of underfoot and a 
width of overhead that your blind swallower of 
scenery misses as completely as that other ama- 
teur in living, the man who exists in the morrow 
and ignores to-day. If one could only chain a 



118 THE CATSKILLS 

member of this haste-and-waste club within a glen, 
or moor him beside a bloom-edged lake for one 
whole day sometime, he might thank you for it. 
But there is a risk. 

The other satisfaction we had, besides the de- 
light of loafing along, was the coming home each 
night. Home may be where one hangs up his hat, 
but, I insist, only after he has hung it there once 
before. Even more important than the hat-rack 
standard is the quality of welcome. This is like 
the quality of mercy, only more versatile, and 
in our case most genuine. The tales of Mr. Lay- 
man would furnish forth a boys' series of Ex- 
citing Excitements in Exciting-Land. He had 
killed thirty-six bears before he was twenty-six. 
Being nearly eighty, he could remember the days 
when the settlers depended entirely on corn meal 
and game for their winter supplies. Yet, even 
at that, they lived so long that they became ex- 
tremely frail. As far as I could ascertain, they 
never died ; the wind blew them away. 

Mr. Layman's father had told him tales more 
remarkable yet: Of Louis Wetzel, the great In- 
dian-killer, whose favorite diversion was to sit 
in a cave, gobble like a wild turkey, and when an 
Indian appeared to secure the more gullible 
biped. The country motto was, apparently: 
Every Indian out of the way is one Indian less. 
Mr. Lindsay was another apt Indian-getter. One 



STONY CLOVE 119 

day six redskins materialized from the wood, as 
he was splitting rails. They were chestnut rails. 
Mr. Lindsay did not interrupt his work to kill 
those Indians just then. Soon his ax stuck, and 
he asked the six Indians who were grouped about, 
to pull the rail apart. They did ; and then the rail, 
being chestnut, closed upon their sixty fingers. 
It was, of course, a simple matter to decapitate 
them seriatim. 

Some nights we chose neighborhood gossip in- 
stead of tales of colonial prowess. There was one 
bit of history about the founding of Haines ' Falls 
that hit Brute particularly hard on his ample fun- 
ny-bone. Haines' Falls at first was completely 
Haines '. The Hainesness of it was sometimes up- 
setting to the chance visitor. One tourist was be- 
ing driven in, and asked his guide who lived in the 
house they came to first. Abram Haines. In the 
second? Charles Haines. The third? Aaron 
Haines. The next? Captain Pete Haines. 

''Heavens!" exclaimed the tourist. "Let's 
take the other road." 

But on the other road the three houses belonged 
to Levi Haines, Jesse Hames, and Uncle Jerry 
Haines. Out that tourist got. 

And so did Brute and I — ^but for a different rea- 
son. We had decided that, as we were indulging 
in a magnificient indolence, we would make it pay 
for itself. I was to take notes for some magazine 



120 THE CATSKILLS 

articles, Brute was to memorize the roads for sum- 
mer exploitation. Sometimes it happens that the 
moment a vacation acquires a motive it loses 
everything else. We had already had a fortnight 
of superior freedom and were on our guard. Be- 
neath the cuticle of laziness the dermis of doing 
something began to itch ; and so, seizing a morn- 
ing of exceeding promise, we once more became 
horses to our packs, engines to our shoes, and 
slaves to the map. 

The most ambitious avenue for our stored ener- 
gies was Hunter Mountain, the guardian to the 
north entrance of Stony Clove, the most observed 
of all observers. Hunter, the hypocrite, for long 
posed as the highest mountain in the Catskills. 
Slide, who betters him by two hundred feet, sat 
coy as Cinderella in the back mountains, unmeas- 
ured and unsung. Hearsay is stronger than the- 
odolites. I shall never forget one ingenuous na- 
tive whom we asked how much higher was a cer- 
tain mountain that obviously rose several hundred 
feet above the one on which we all were standing. 
He said: ''That ain't really higher. They say 
this is the highest mountain in the State of New 
York." 

Hunter is a climb-repaying mountain. From 
the steel tower on the top the entire Catskill moun- 
tainland is visible. Stony Clove, the cross-bar 
of the letter H which is completed by the valleys 



STONY CLOVE 121 

of the Esopus and the Schoharie, is but a gash 
in mother earth. The mass of the southern Cats- 
kills rises in ranged domes, which on that morn- 
ing dropped into gulfs made pearl-gray by the 
mists of melting snow. Westward the chain that 
walls the valley toward Lexington wandered away 
until it grew soft with lilacs and lavendars. The 
great expanses of leafless hardwoods gave an un- 
real tone even to the foreground. The rest of the 
scene was vibrating in the sun. The east was 
swallowed up in light, and the broad valley toward 
Stoppel Mountain shone with white fields and 
whiter roofs. 

If you have your nerve with you, climb Hunter 
some forenoon that promises thunder. The north 
line of the Schoharie Valley becomes compact with 
clouds that stand for hours waiting for the signal 
to advance. Nowhere else can you find more 
beautiful concentrations of vapor. The rugged 
chain of hills seems to be continued in the moun- 
tainous masses resting on dark fields of larkspur 
blue. It will be a day when the southwest wind 
has brought reinforcements all the way from the 
Gulf of Mexico for the tremendous gun-play. If 
you know what is coming there will be thrills along 
your spine. From this lookout that controls every 
valley of approach you will see the small ravines 
darken, the sunlight pass from the plains, the con- 
centration of opposing forces deepen in intensity. 



122 THE CATSKILLS 

The breeze dies. A song-sparrow half way down 
the mountain sings once. A great gun rumbles 
far beyond the ranges, then another on the other 
flank. 

By this time you, who have been half in doubt 
whether to race down to the bottom or to brave 
it out in the watchman's shelter, know that re- 
treat is impossible. You resolve to stay on the 
tower to the last moment, and then if your time 
has come it will come. Allah is good. 

Slowly the flanks close in, and distant flashes are 
followed by a long roar that ends in a sullen boom 
where the projectile struck. Suddenly your at- 
tention is caught by a line of gray. It rises from 
the horizon in an arc that widens as you look. The 
assault is on. In magnificent order the line ad- 
vances. For a frightened moment you question 
whether you have been wise. The cannonade is 
now terrific, and from horizon to horizon drops a 
blinding barrage out of the inexorable blackness. 

Over the top, across the valley, the wind has 
blotted out the world. You have one moment to 
live. A gigantic bolt falls upon the Shandaken 
Valley, and another leaps to the sky from Black 
Dome. If it weren't for the fire-warden beside 
you, you must retreat. In a vast fury of dust,, 
drenching fire, and roar of artillery, the storm 
troops sweep across the valley. The village of 
Hunter is taken, the next range is swallowed up. 



STONY CLOVE 123 

A terrific thunder, piling down upon the darkness 
that was Tannersville, shakes the tower. The 
noise is overpowering, and you turn to go. The 
Powers have the range. Another broad stream of 
fire falls into Spruceton, and the roar, mingling 
with the cannonade of center and of the right, 
crushes the prostrate valleys. You are fighting 
to get down the tower. Wind, leaves, rain-shrap- 
nel ; the whole weight of the assault is on yon. In 
the cabin is the darkness of night, now shattered by 
blinding flashes, now doubly dark. The hurricane 
of rain batters at the defenses of the cabin, and 
hail-grenades explode upon the pane. At the su- 
preme moment a shell tears the world asunder, 
and the whole universe seems yielding to its 
forces in a great debacle. 

I have not exaggerated. No one could. A 
well developed thunder-storm viewed from a 
point of vantage, particularly at the twilight hour, 
is as magnificent a spectacle as is offered to most 
of us. A great earthquake, a volcano in action, 
a modern battle — any of these may be far more 
impressive, particularly the last, which involves 
moral forces. But a thunder-storm is compara- 
tively harmless. A barn or so, a tree or so, a 
man or two — of course there is a price for every- 
thing ; but compared to the earthquake or the erup- 
tion the price is very small, and compared to the 
battle less than nothing, for no one is to blame 



124 THE CATSKILLS 

for the destruction that may occur. Nowhere are 
thunder-storms so well staged as in the Catskills, 
and in the Catskills nowhere can they be seen to 
more comprehensive advantage than from the 
steel towers on Hunter, Tremper or Belle Ayre. 
Nor, strange to say, is there a much safer spot 
to look from. For, when the burning hoof of the 
lightning has raced too near, you can always visit 
with the fire watcher in his cabin near by, and 
be protected by the adjacent tower, which any 
wandering bolt would covet first. Time was when 
all of us children looked forward for about half 
a year to the feeble explosions of the noisy Fourth. 
Time might very easily be when some enterprising 
person will erect insulated bleachers and charge 
admission to as magnificent a spectacle as our 
continent affords. At present the towers are free. 
All this time Brute and I have been shivering 
on Hunter. We are tired of far-reaching, imper- 
sonal scenery, and decide upon a raid into the 
comfortably contracted coziness of Stony Clove. 
It is late when we get there. We walk to Lanes- 
ville and take a long rest. Unconsciously we have 
done our very best by the Clove. Lateness and 
rest are just what it requires to bring out its best. 
It is beautiful, always. If there is any quiet bit 
of scenery that has had more injustice done it by 
the blather of tourist sketch and railroad guide, 
I have yet to read about it. 




Photograph by J. B. Allison 



lluNTEli ,\oT( II — >T<>NV » I.<)\ K 



STONY CLOVE 127 

There follows the railroad's description. I am 
responsible for the italics, because I could n't bear 
for any one to miss the idea that the scenery 
through this pleasant valley is going to be ''aw- 
fully grand. ' ' 

' ' Geologists differ as to the probable cause of this cleav- 
age of the crags. Steeple Mountain and Burnt Knob rise 
abruptly skyward over across the valley, and there are 
various other soaring peaks with craggy crests now com- 
ing into view which add rugged grandeur to the scene. 
. . . Edgewood, 1787 feet above the tide, . . . where a 
few acres of ahnost perpendicular meadows have 
been reclaimed from the relentless grasp of the great 
CRAG. . . ." 

Well, there you get one notion : crags and crags 
and crags, until the neck is cricked and the head 
dizzy with the vertiginous display. One might 
almost suppose that the traveling public would 
hesitate to intrust itself to a passage imperiled 
by such overwhelming crags. 

If you visit the place you will get another idea 
of it. You will see a valley winding, at a grade 
not at all embarrassing to motorists, to the two 
thousand foot level, and whose sides slope up- 
ward from a thousand to fifteen hundred feet 
higher. They are chiefly forested at the top. 
Near the northern end of the Clove the valley 
sides draw together, forming a gorge wide enough 
for a pike, a railroad, and a tiny pond. About 
as noticeable as the Clove's glaciers and volcanos 



128 THE CATSKILLS 

are its soaring peaks and craggy crests. If one 
chooses to be maudlin about it and compare it with 
some of the foremost exhibits of Rocky Mountain 
scenery, the Stony Clove is a pathetic failure. 
But if one is willing to accept it as a thing of 
beauty in its own right, a leisurely stroll along 
the Clove can be as satisfying a walk as any that 
our united country can produce. It was a revela- 
tion to Brute and me that afternoon. 

The first impression we obtained was of grace- 
ful proportions. Instead of frowning battlements 
and crushing ponderousness, the sides of the val- 
ley seemed to soar on broader wings and rise on 
more reposeful curves than those that water usu- 
ally carves. Then came the color. The bottom 
meadows were already greening; blue streamers of 
wood smoke floated from the chimneys of house- 
wives who would have early supper. Here and 
there slides of ruddy shale shone in the back- 
ground, and higher lines of snow gleamed white 
along the barer ledges. Overhead clear blue. It 
was as fair a scene as is likely to greet two tired 
mountaineers at the close of any day. 

If you will believe me that the Stony Clove is a 
pastoral of lyric beauty with one dramatic climax, 
instead of the roaring bloody gulch of the fictional 
folder, I hope that you will also believe that its 
beauties cannot be more than skimmed by him who 
trusts only to steam or gasoline for his scenic 



STONY CLOVE 129 

memories. It is about ten miles from Phoenicia 
to the Kaaterskill Junction, and the stroll is worth 
a day. 

If the Mountain House is the eye of the Cats- 
kills, the Overlook the brow, Windham the lungs, 
and Slide Mountain the heart, then PhcEnicia is 
the nerve center. It lies at the cross-roads of 
Nature, and as snug in its valleys as a moth in a 
muff. For merchantry it should be a strategic 
place to live. Every motorist who comes up the 
Esopus Valley from Kingston, or down the Eso- 
pus from the west, every traveler whose traffic de- 
lights the eye or dusts the nose of sellers of wares, 
must bisect Phoenicia. Yet, in a place where 
money is being made the people did not impress 
me as a lot of mere money-changers. Phoenicia 
has kept decent. She has not run to greenbacks 
at the expense of every other sentiment. She has 
been given a beautiful nest by Nature, and she has 
kept it sweet-smelling. Her stores are clean, her 
outsides painted, her bit of the earth keeps its 
charm. One does not have to forget any unpleas- 
antness preparatory to enjoying the contentments 
of the Clove. 

If you walk up from Phoenicia and follow the 
rails instead of the road, you will take your im- 
pressions from the more alluring vantage. The 
road keeps well to the bottom of the valley, the 
rails run on middle slopes. You get the heights 



130 THE CATSKILLS 

and also the meadows spread in soft patches below. 

Leaving Phoenicia a-sparkle in its mountain set- 
ting, — Tremper on the east, Romer on the south, 
Sheridan on the west, — there is a short distance 
through a hill-lane, and then the village of Chi- 
chester and the outspreading dale open upon one 
as the world opens to a Jack-in-the-box released. 
This village, with its Welsh beginnings, its half- 
Roman name, its German chair-making, its Lom- 
bardy poplars, its Old Glory on the pole — how 
typical of the American mosaic! 

The rails now climbed a little. We loafed along 
after them, sat now on some cleared knoll or 
mounted a little higher to search the heart of this 
superb valley. More than refreshing it was to 
find that here, in one of the show-spots of the East, 
there had been no attempts to magnify Nature into 
a spectacle. There are some people to whom Na- 
ture seems obsolete, out of style, and ready for 
rearrangement. Every little while in the rich 
pine woods you will come upon an estate where 
the Most High has been set heavily upon a back 
seat and the reins given over to a landscape- 
gardener. It used to be the fashion to trim ani- 
mals into the proper style, and it is still the fashion 
to level aged pines, make artificial lawns, and 
keep them raked clean of noisome anemones and 
the rank hepatica. 

The kindly Stony Clovers have had truer sensi- 



STONY CLOVE 131 

bilities. When they settled this masterpiece of 
Nature, this wide-sprung, hospital ravine, they 
took Nature as she was, cleared a field here, threw 
a road there, but left everything else as humdrum 
and unprogressive as the Lord had made it. Con- 
sequently the tourist to-day finds great woods re- 
maining, does not find the cliffs made interesting 
with advertisement. In the village where we 
spent the night we found heart-of-oak people. 
The closer to the soil men are, the less presump- 
tion they have, the less presumption, the less they 
perish from the earth. If it is a contest in lon- 
gevity between high heels and the broad-toed boot, 
the last chapter is always written by the boot. 
High Heels complains that the simple life breeds 
simpletons. Boots retorts that summer folk are 
chatterers. It would require an interminable sit- 
ting of the jury to bring in a decision. Sufficient 
for Brute and me was the sight of an industrious 
people keeping the lap of these fair mountains 
sweet with cows and clover, without eye-sore or 
exploitation. Doubtless to them life hinged upon 
the price of pork ; but it did not intrude duly into 
their conversation, and we found great eagerness 
to hear the latest news of France and our men-at- 
arms. Life in the Stony Clove, typical of the life 
in many of the Catskill valleys, seemed pliable 
at the top, steadfast at bottom, and wholesome 
through. 



132 THE CATSKILLS 

Lanesville is a friendly village lying in the 
heart of the vale. The environment of enclosing 
mountain gave one the immediate sense of "all 's 
well with the world. ' ' Nothing untoward could in- 
trude. Across the foot of the valley ran a splendid 
range, possibly distant Panther. Into the west- 
ern sky rose Westkill, a glorious mountain-wall, 
with its inviting Hollow Tree ravine. An arc of 
green hill shut one in, breathing a peace suscepti- 
ble only to little ills which a neighbor's sympathy 
could soothe. Valley life is very alluring to hill- 
walkers. 

Above Lanesville the mountains close in. Of 
an afternoon black shadows flow down from the 
western ridges, like inexorable glaciers devouring 
the farms, the brook, the opposing hill. But in 
the night the cottage lights shine bravely out. 
One white and lonely house high on the moun- 
tain's shoulder, which was just about to surrender 
to the creeping shadows, left a picture as of an 
embodiment of struggle in my memory. It would 
need a poet to write its annals, a painter to ar- 
rest your glance with the heather-purple of that 
twilight glen. But when I said something about 
its pioneer loneliness to Brute, he replied: "I 
suppose they 've all gone to the movies." 

That was the fun of being with Brute. You 
could never predict his reactions. Hungry, he 
would turn all the sanctities into a mockery. 



STONY CLOVE 133 

Moved by some scene of beauty, there was none 
more devout. Dependable at - base, honest 
throughout, he let his moods play with the tendrils 
of his fancy as a current plays with submerged 
grasses, waving at the top, rooted at the bottom. 

Edgewood brings the valley to a climax, sitting 
enthroned in the measure of its maturity. Only 
the narrow passage north remains of all the gen- 
erous spaciousness below. At Edgewood the view 
is nearest to grandeur. Ahead, the Notch; be- 
hind, the winding smiling valley and the curved 
hills. The mountains attain a dignity seen rarely 
elsewhere in the Catskills. Seracs of shale crop 
out, and the shoulders of Hunter are still high 
above you. 

The Notch is an impressionist carving in that 
most successful of all designs, the V. There is a 
little pond at the top, a sort of mild morass, then 
just the road and rail and the wind, working con- 
scientiously at his bellows. Soon the road drops 
swiftly, the Clove is left behind, and your glance 
falls on old Glum, and the valley of the Schoharie. 



CHAPTER X 

A CHAPTER ON SHOES 

THERE are a lot of people who might like to 
walk — if they had ever tried it. Of all forms 
of getting about, walking is the most abjured. 
To anybody who has cycled or sailed or shot along 
in an automobile, there is nothing appealing in 
the prospect of going over the same ground at 
one tenth the speed for ten times as much exer- 
tion. Canal-boat or stage, horse-back or ob- 
servation-car, canoe or even ski, but never, never 
(so I said) should my standards of expedient be 
lowered to the dust of a walking trip. Five miles 
on a Sunday afternoon, or even ten up some re- 
mote mountain if need be ; but as for interminable 
distances by foot for extravagant lengths of time 
— might I be tied to a rocking-chair first. And 
then the shameful thing occurred. 

**What 's the use o' leggin' it?" 

That was Brute's query on the notable day on 
which he gave up his Ford and took to the trail. 
I have only one answer, yet. I may find more as 
the reformation progresses, but the **use o' leg- 
gin' it" is the ability to take the short and pre- 

134 



A CHAPTER ON SHOES 135 

ferred cut. A region traversable by gasoline, a 
mountain ascendable by electricity, or a country 
visitable by steam shall not abrade my boots. 
There are still mountains, however, up which one 
cannot be carried either in Pullmans or palan- 
quins, still regions where the only roads are a 
foot wide and paved with pine-needles. Most 
curious of all, there are still vast countrysides, of 
which the Catskills is but one, where a wilderness 
alternates with villages to make a walker's holi- 
day. 

The secret of travel on good roads is a good 
car. The secret of the wilderness is the walker's, 
and his alone. Life cannot be read about. 
Neither can the woods. The delights of the woods 
are discussable only after they have been experi- 
enced. They must be experienced personally; 
nor is the least flavor of them to be got vicariously, 
any more than one can grow religious by hearsay. 
"Walking is as personal a matter as growing up, 
and I no more propose to dilate upon my delight 
in walking (in the pathless woods) than I should 
propose to communicate my exact pleasure in the 
trout and bacon at the end of the trail. 

The fact that I have been converted to walking 
(where riding is impossible), and that Brute now 
sees the use in leggin' it (where there are no other 
legs available) remains. And at the risk of ex- 
posing our low standards of equipment, we both 



136 THE CATSKILLS 

think it is highly proper to outline the, for us, car- 
dinal virtues of pedestrian outfit as applied to 
Catskill contingencies. 

First as to the sins : There are two prime sins 
of the road : ambition and new shoes. Of the two 
the latter is the worse. Let it be with you a moral 
adage never to start out with untried shoes. 
Something is sure to happen. It is sure to. 
There is not even a sporting chance that it will 
not. It will occur — probably not before the fif- 
tieth mile, perhaps not until the hundred and fif- 
tieth. Then it does. A heel blisters, a sole-nail 
works through, a tendon succumbs to an unaccus- 
tomed last. There are a good many steps to a 
mile, a good many miles to a successful day ; and 
if each step is taxed even .001 per cent.of pleasure, 
it is but a matter of distance until pleasure is bank- 
rupt. 

The reality is worse than that. At the second 
twinge the entire usury of torture is foreseen. 
Content flies at the first unholy intimation that 
there is something wrong. Imagination paints an 
endless series of such twinges. Not only the day 
at hand is instantly ruined, but imagination leaps 
the night, ruins the next day, sicklies the whole 
trip with its pale forecast of thought. And all be- 
cause of one little ouch. And that because of a new 
shoe. As you revere serenity, do not yield to the 
allurements of new leather. Nor of low shoes. 



A CHAPTER ON SHOES 137 

Nor of high, heavy boots. The army, which may 
advance upon its stomach, nevertheless has given 
much thought to its footwear, and a broken-in 
pair of army shoes is the best insurance of sheer 
comfort, uncontaminated with foreboding. Also 
it is not necessary to carry another pair. They 
will be wet? Then stuff paper inside them for the 
night to hold the shape. It is better to put them 
on damp than bone-dry. Socks will do the rest. 
Socks, neither, should be new. By socks I do 
not mean that sort of hosiery worn in cities. Traf- 
fic with nothing but the stout socks sold to lumber- 
jacks which you have laid in for occasion when 
you were passing through Bangor or Quebec or 
back-woods villages in the Adirondacks. They 
will wade you through water and see you up moun- 
tains without resort to needle and thread. They 
will guard you against chill or chafe. A pair for 
feet and a pair for your pack are enough. On a 
cold night put the dry pair on. They will be your 
best friend, and the only thing a man has the 
strength and nerve to put on wet and continue 
happy. Properly socked and shoed, your trip's 
success is half assured. The next hold on comfort 
is taken when you confine the loose ends of your 
trousers in something, better sock than shoe, but 
into something golf-wise, riding-wise, or wood- 
jack-wise. If they flap they tear and collect the 
mud. Wet they weigh and look worse than if you 



138 THE CATSKILLS 

had cut off the cuffs and fixed them debonairly 
down. It adds ten per cent, to the length of a day. 
A flannel shirt is the only thing ever invented 
that is more comfortable than bed. By day, by 
night, sometimes by day and night, it does its duty 
in a transcendental way. There is nothing that 
you can demand of it which it will not perform. 
Is it a cold night? It keeps you warm. Is it a 
hot day? It is less clammy than linen. Has the 
rain been raining for a week? It maintains your 
bodily heat so that that week shall not be your 
last. In every emergency the shirt on your back 
is right there. It, unlike the matches, the food, 
the rain-coat, the fire on the hearth, has not been 
left at home. It is the open sesame to a logger ^s 
cabin, where any other costume would cause dis- 
trust. It will be tolerated in the hostelry of fash- 
ion near the woods, be you but washed and sun- 
burned. It also can be washed — though seldom 
is. No black fly can pierce it, no irritable thorn- 
bush is likely to tear it. It is cheap, and lasts 
forever. But I see you smile ; you have three al- 
ready. For a top dressing on our winter trip we 
wore mackinaws, a close rival of the flannel shirt in 
versatility and satisfaction. A sweater under 
something might do, but a mackinaw is better, 
looks neater, and has pockets. In summer it is 
too heavy. The lightest kind of rain-coat carried 



A CHAPTER ON SHOES 139 

in the knapsack is worth while then for the tran- 
sient shower. 

My English knapsack, with its drawing-string 
instead of buckles, its outside pockets, and its bull- 
dog durability, was large enough to take the extra 
underwear, socks, pajamas, toilet things, Eed 
Cross stuff, a little sewing kit, camera films, maps, 
compass, note-books, raisins, and chocolate. With 
the summer rain-coat it weighed twelve pounds. 
On top I could have added a blanket, a fry-pan, 
plate, knife and spoon, a little corn meal, bacon, 
tea, and sugar, thus becoming independent for 
short cross-country divagations. 

But I have never been able to regard myself as 
a pack-animal; at least, in the Catskills. There 
is a very great distinction between a walking trip 
and the camping trip where you walk. In the 
latter, staged preferably in the Adirondacks, one 
wears a pack-basket, roams over a district com- 
pletely unpeopled, endeavors to lay the foundation 
of the cuisine with trout. One walks because there 
don't happen to be canoe routes where one wants 
to go. The walking is incidental to the fishing, 
the mountaineering, the fun of keeping house with- 
out a house. One carries a tent, blanket, food, and 
utensils gladly because the delights of the trip 
are worth the price of conveyance. You could n 't 
go unless you went that way. While, on the other 



140 THE CATSKILLS 

hand, a walking trip is a light-hearted, almost 
empty-handed, nearly unplanned affair. 

In the Catskills there are too many charming 
people to drop in upon to warrant the Adirondack 
style. If Brute and I had evaded farm-houses for 
our night's stops, we should also have missed three 
of the most interesting groups of people it has 
been my luck to know. Our country is so broad, 
so varied in opportunity, so different are the 
methods of travel that the peculiarities of each sec- 
tion demand, that by the time you have fitted each 
method to its locality you have tried every kind, 
even if there are several ways of seeing the Yel- 
lowstone, the Maine woods, the Catskills, there is 
one way that best brings out the genius of the 
place, the one and only way that commandeers its 
utmost resources. 



CHAPTER XI 

BEUTE^S LITTLE GAME 

HOW real, how similar to life, that, after ex- 
tolling the pleasures that our mode of way- 
faring hatched out, after disclaiming all convey- 
ance in favor of leggin' it, how perversely natural 
that Brute and I should climb into an automobile ! 

Yet there were three excuses : we were tempted. 
Brute's heel had been chafed, and spring, which 
had been dammed up by winter until the north- 
wind barriers could no longer hold, burst through 
and overflowed the country. It was my second 
spring within a month. This time the tides were 
even stronger, the flood of sunlight more compel- 
ling, the roads more bibulous. 

To the north of us lay the Windham country, and 
to the west also untoured provinces that, from 
Hunter Mountain, had looked worth while. We 
stood on the swift highway — swift because the cur- 
rent of slush-water was at the lowest three miles 
an hour — ready to toss the coin. If it came down 
E Pluribus Unum we would be off to Windham, 
but if In God We Trust we should go west. Des- 
tiny, I 'd have you remember, is inseparate from 

141 



142 THE CATSKILLS 

character. Our characters were to be awarded 
more than a ten-cent destiny. At the very mo- 
ment when we were to commit our futures to God 
or the Union, an automobile, mire-covered, but 
with a back seat empty, slowed down, the driver 
motioned to us to get in, and without comment in 
we got. 

This was at 9.10 a. m., the beginning of as su- 
perior a round of absurdity as I have ever gratu- 
itously indulged in. The only extenuation I seek 
is that the growth of the Game — the name we used 
to cover our later foolishness — was gradual and 
not premeditated art. Otherwise our face would 
blush. 

It was an excellent country for a hydroplane. 
Slush ran down every declivity and collected at 
the bottom. Each hour the sun added an inch of 
water, I should judge, to the general level. Our 
driver was greatly pressed for time, we thought, 
for with us safely in he soon attained a mud-splat- 
tering impetus that prevented conversation. Only 
once he turned and said: 

"Where you going?" 

* * Can 't say, ' ' we replied ; ' ' where are you ? ' ' 

«*Jewett." 

Never having heard of Jewett, we could not very 
well object to going there, and settled back to en- 
joy the unusual voyage. It reminded me of those 
Channel crossings when the newspaper warnings 



BRUTE'S LITTLE GAME 145 

would announce winds ''fresh to stormy." But 
our automobile was a gallant side-wheeler. Along 
the level we threw an even sheet of water on either 
side. Then we would come to a down plunge into 
the obscure gulf at the bottom. Owing to the ex- 
treme importance of our captain's getting to 
Jewett, there was no slowing up. Fortunately, we 
rode the waves well. Again and again a breaker 
would curl over the radiator and dash in angry 
spray against the wind-shield. In our back seat 
we braced ourselves against the ground-swell and 
listened to the hiss and swirl with considerable en- 
joyment. There is this one thing about a devas- 
tating pace produced by some one else 's throttle : 
you won't abate the danger by taking thought. If 
you have confidence, stay in; if you haven't, get 
out. But, in either event, indulge in a little en- 
joyment. 

The day we were to have gave us foundations 
for comparison of towns. The character and 
appearance of Catskill towns, which are really 
only villages in their teens, vary enough to make a 
sermon on. Nearly all of them began in the tan- 
ning business. To-day the pleasure that they give 
to the eye and the nose differs with a difference 
that reaches to the very roots. 

There are Catskill communities that express all 
the civic virtues. Eoxbury, to mention one, glad- 
dens the eye and the intelligence. It must spend 



146 THE CATSKILLS 

fortunes in white paint. But the result is pros- 
perity, comfort, progress, and self-respect. The 
splendid trees along its street are kept in order. 
The library is full and immaculate. The stores 
are clean, the bank doubtless overflowing. There 
is a church for the pious, and a park for the rest — 
in fact, several churches and an endless park ; for 
the hills come down to the Delaware as gracefully 
as deer to water, and woods invite one from a town 
that one is loath to leave. 

How differently other Catskill towns make one 
feel: as if immediate flight were the one grateful 
prerogative left to their inhabitants. One needs 
to travel to the raw frontier to find dingier or more 
calamitous-looking villages than some of the con- 
glomerations Brute and I passed through. There 
is some excuse for the frontier towns, but none for 
these. The stark and paintless parade on the 
prairie, the wooden shanties in the desert, are but 
for overnight. One knows that the next tornado 
will get them, anyway. But in the Catskills they 
should build for old age. There may be poverty, 
but no poverty such as one finds in older countries. 
In Italy, in Cornwall, along the Zuyder Zee there 
is poverty, but at least it is clean and often pic- 
turesque. 

The truth is that half the boarding-house towns 
in America are still rectilinear dumps. I wonder 
how long we shall have to wait for a Town Board 



BRUTE'S LITTLE GAME 147 

of Art, with powers to prescribe the minimum of 
ugliness allowable. Even the Boards of Health 
might be given such powers. Vines are more 
sanitary than tin cans, shining creeks than open 
sewers. Trees are less expensive than awnings. 
Paint is cheaper than microbes. I should tremble 
for some of the mud-colored crimes of the archi- 
tects if Elisha should pass by. He would call 
down the fires once more. 

Early in our wanderings Brute and I hit upon 
a way of deciding upon the house wherein we 
should put up. If there were several to choose 
from, we invariably took the one painted to a sem- 
blance of prosperity. If there were several such, 
we took the one with geraniums in the window. 
People who take care of flowers take care of food. 
And since, doubtless, all travelers are swayed by 
appearance as much as we, the future of the spot- 
less towns in the Catskills — and there are several 
— is much easier to predict than of those dingy 
dens one occasionally meets. 

Our barge was heading down the Schoharie Val- 
ley, and, despite the heavy sea, we had thimblefuls 
of view. All along the south ran a continuing 
range, gaping infrequently, and carrying one's 
vision up until you felt a little thrill as at the apex 
of a swing. Perhaps this was our motion, but I 
think not. The south side of the valley is very 
fine. The static view to be had from Onteora 



148 THE CATSKILLS 

Park, giving the bulk of Plateau Mountain, the 
yawn of Stony Clove, and the broad dignity of 
Hunter and his clan, is repayment for the climb. 
But our first impression, our running view, caught 
between lurch and tumble in the bright freshet of 
sunlight and snow water, will never be overplaced. 
Despite the flourish of our progress, we ran over 
neither urchins nor poultry in the towns. The 
road continued toward Lexington and Prattsville, 
but a few miles past Hunter our Jehu swung to the 
right and we began to mount into as fine a stretch 
of country as any one has had the effrontery to 
describe. On one hand the dark swiftness of the 
little Eastkill fled from hemlock shadow into glit- 
ter of sun, then like a trout sparkled back again 
into its cover. It was utterly charming, utterly 
ingenuous. I have never seen anything like the 
Catskill streams for gripping one's memory so 
lightly yet with so firm a hand. Mental pictures 
of them do not subsist on the condition of time. 
Once in the mind, they are there forever. Decades 
from now they will show as bright in my inward 
eye as did Wordsworth's octogenarian daffodils. 
Eepeatedly, during that month of flowing April, I 
found those eager, spiritual little streams covering 
the blank of consciousness with the hieroglyphics 
of their glamour. There come back pictures of 
the blue ranges, the lower hillsides quilted with 
wood-lot and pasture, the curving roads, and the 



BRUTE'S LITTLE GAME 149 

tins shining on the maple-trunks they drained ; but 
clearest of all are the swift streams. 

The uplands around Jewett are a great sugar 
country. The mottled bark of maples, the glint 
of cans, were on every hand. To the south, val- 
leys dropped toward the Schoharie, and rolling 
highlands carried the horizon. In the distance 
the hardwood forest seemed to close in and decora- 
tions of conifer darkened its breast. Truly it was 
a lovely country to ride through, and as the pro- 
gressive depth of mud caused a slackening of our 
pace, I had time to wish that we were going to put 
up at the attractive farms which we passed at con- 
siderable intervals. If there was anything which 
I should feel confident of recommending without 
having tried, I might safely warrant that there 
would be good fare, sweet beds, and suflQcient vari- 
ety of amusement in the country around the East- 
kill. 

And now the gentleman our carrier, having re- 
bounded to his home whence doubtless he had 
earlier sprung that morning, set us down. 
Spoiled by such swift society, we were unloaded 
upon the road willy-nilly. The sun had not only 
returned to its season, but promised to overshoot 
it in the direction of summer. In a trice we had 
been carried from the half -wild region of the Stony 
Clove to a well cultivated demesne. Suddenly we 
became averse to wading. All that waddle are not 



150 THE CATSKILLS 

geese, perhaps, but they feel like 'em, and as we 
started off on the five-mile hike to the state road 
for Windham the germ of the Game was already 
depositing a shameful idea in each one of our 
brain-cells, as the cow-bird does her egg, leaving 
it to be hatched by circumstance. 

If one can call the sun a circumstance, then one 
might have said that the hatching would soon take 
place. It beat upon us as we slopped along our 
canal. Brute had just been reminded of his sore 
heel, when the noise of a motor brought us to a 
halt. This time it was a truck. By merely look- 
ing intelligently wistful, the invitation was 
secured. For the second time that morning, the 
boy and I climbed aboard for some strange port of 
call. Nothing mattered since we were out of the 
mud. 

Cruising on a truck had certain advantages. 
The additional time available gave one an oppor- 
tunity to digest the scenery for which swifter 
flight had created the appetite. Also it made the 
captain, quite weary of navigation, eager to con- 
verse. For a while Brute seemed strangely im- 
mersed in reverie. But the range of the driver's 
gossip became so wide and his ability to eke out a 
commonplace narrative with personals so vivid 
that he soon joined me as a listener. We lost the 
white spire of Jewett's church, careened down the 
hill, well called Prospect, into East Ashland, rode 



BRUTE'S LITTLE GAME 151 

into Windham and beyond, still listening. Only 
when he threw her again upon the starboard tack 
that would bring us into Hunter did I request to 
be set down. 

**Well, what f or ?" inquired Brute, peering after 
the vanishing truck. 

*' Everybody has said we must see Windham 
heights. We 're nearest now." 

**Do you mean to walk?" 

*' It is n't deep enough to swim. 

''Why not keep on riding till it dries up?" 

*'How ingenious!" I said. But sarcasm rico- 
chets from Brute. He was standing, intent upon 
the distance, looking altogether unsubduable by 
any element, be it mud or water. Evidently his 
brain-cells had hatched and the germs of the Game 
were already active, for they soon gave tongue. 

"We can keep on riding till the roads dry up 
and blow away," was his comment on my doubt, 
' ' if you only follow the rules of the Game. ' ' 

"Which are?" 

"First, wait for an automobile. Second, have 
it stop for you. ' ' 

"A very wise rule," I could not help saying. 
"The third!" 

"Look here," he replied, somewhat nettled. 
"Nothing in particular if you don't want to. I 
thought it 'd be a good way to get a lay of the 
country. ' ' 



152 THE CATSKILLS 

Despite the maturity of his brain and brawn, 
Brute was very much a boy at heart, and his face 
so fell at the thought of giving up his new scheme 
of transportation that a laugh escaped me. 

*'I 'm game," I insisted, *'for a couple of 
rounds, anyway. It sounds only a little more 
brazen than holding a man up at the point of a 
pistol. The third rule is ? " 

''The third rule is to take the first car that comes 
along and not to care shucks where it 's going." 

"That suits me perfectly — for instance, this." 

A big Buick swept by in a lavish spectacle of 
mud, some of which I could still probably find on 
my clothes if I brushed hard. 

**Now," continued Brute in a matter-of-fact 
manner, ''that car scores five points for the op- 
ponents. If a Ford outwits us it counts ten points, 
because it is harder for a Ford to escape. Each 
ride nets us five points. Are you on?" 

I was. The Buick 's mud bath had left me 
callous to any of the slighter modesties. It was 
going to be a contest between us two and the world 
on wheels, and although I did not anticipate much 
edification geographically, I had to own to a 
curiosity in the practical problem that Brute had 
laid open for solution. So long as I should taste 
the mixture of shale and slush so liberally show- 
ered upon me by the Buick, I would be "on." 
With the dramatic art that provides the effect 



BRUTE'S LITTLE GAME 153 

while obscuring the means, Brute bade me mount 
into a new Cadillac that had just tendered its serv- 
ices. The Game had begun with a score of five to 
five. 

I have no intention of detailing the experiences 
of that day. If you wish to call us names, I pray 
you temper them with the knowledge that our op- 
ponents won; though the margin was slight and 
due entirely to the politeness of our brigandage. 
We began to develop a technique of hold-up, which 
never, however, overstepped the boundary of 
drawing-room behavior. 

For instance, a car approaches. We are walk- 
ing away from Hunter. We deprecatorily detain 
it for information. **Sir, how far is it to Hun- 
ter!" If the driver be mortal he will exclaim, 
*'But, gentlemen, you are going the wrong way I" 
We are silent. If he, too, is a gentleman, he offers 
us a seat thither. For this, according to the chiv- 
alry of the Game, he gets a cigar from each. Thus 
the Game develops ethics. Indeed, if our chauf- 
feur brings us to the hour of refreshment, he is 
invited to the meal. The Game is expensive. 

That night we slept within four miles of the 
place wherefrom we began the Game. We had 
traveled, we calculated, about two hundred miles. 
It had taken eleven vehicles to accomplish this. 
We had been as far to the northwest as Stamford, 
to the south as Arkville. Three times had we 



154 THE CATSKILLS 

driven up the Stony Clove, and twice around the 
Ashokan Reservoir. One gentleman had had din- 
ner at our expense in Kingston, and some may still 
be smoking our cigars. We had obtained a very 
clear notion of the conventional Catskill routes. 
That night we slept, but only after the Comic 
Muse had got tired and let us alone. Viewed from 
the cool pinnacles of the usual, it had been a day 
of progressive imbecility. Talked over as be- 
tween two of the principals getting ready for bed, 
it had been a harvest of hilarity. 



CHAPTER XII 

OUT WINDHAM WAY 

THE window of our room looked out upon a 
glistening morning. A range of mountains 
thrust a high sky-line against the early sun. We 
were arrogantly fresh in spirit from our day of 
rest, and it did not take much eyeing of the map 
to arrange an all-day tramp that would give us 
new country and keep us from the roads. Ration- 
ing at a comer store, we set out along the Batavia 
Kill. 

This stream, levying tribute from the spectacu- 
lar amphitheater of mountains that enclose Big 
Hollow, is another one of those superlatively en- 
chanting brooks that people love more than they 
can praise. Fifteen littler brooks unite to lend it 
volume before it has run three miles. Every few 
minutes one crosses water — a poor valley for the 
devil, but good for Tam o ' Shanter. 

The great girdle of mountains about the Hol- 
low builds a magnificent wall of green. On the 
south the long range culminates in twin peaks, 
Thomas Cole and Black Dome, turns north with 
Black Head as a pivot, buttresses the east with an 

155 



156 THE CATSKILLS 

even-topped range, swings to the west at Acra 
Point to Burnt Knob, rises to Windham High 
Peak, follows southwest along Elm Ridge, and al- 
most yokes-up with the Thomas Cole Range at the 
village of Big Hollow. Within the valley lies se- 
clusion. From no point can the wind blow with 
uninterrupted force. Every way is banked with 
hard-wood greens, darkening near the tops of the 
mountains into the soberer hues of hemlock. 

Thomas Cole was one of the artists who had a 
sincere love for this region. He was born in Eng- 
land and brought up on the Continent, and it 
speaks well for his sensibility to fineness that he 
could settle in Catskill, devote his attentions to 
the lesser magnificences of these mountains, and 
still write to the United States Consul at Rome: 

''Neither the Alps nor the Apennines nor Etna 
itself have dimmed in my eyes the beauty of the 
Catskills. It seems to me that I look on Amer- 
ican scenery, if it were possible, with increased 
pleasure. It has its own peculiar charm — a some- 
thing not found elsewhere." 

Very appropriately, something of that ** pecul- 
iar charm" is found in the vicinity of the moun- 
tain named for Cole. The ' ' something not found 
elsewhere ' ' is nowhere more easily caught than in 
the loveliness of this Windham region. Cole's 
sentence re-illustrates the truth, so easily over- 
looked, that the value of mountains resides very 



OUT WINDHAM WAY 157 

little in their measurements. Their virtue lies 
in their sweep of slopes, their beauty of contours, 
and the appeal of their covering, whether it be 
forest, rock, or snow. Largeness may engross the 
eye, but if at the expense of nobler properties, one 
emerges sooner or later from the spell and turns 
to other things. Painters have long known this, 
and their canvases refuse the elephantine for its 
own sake. 

Black Dome is, of all these mountains, the stiff- 
est climb, but the most worth while: so I have 
heard, and repeat the rumor — never having 
climbed it. Its summit is 3,990 feet above the 
sea and 1,700 above the end of the road, which is 
about a mile and a half from the top. As we 
wanted not so much the view of the nest of moun- 
tains to the south as the general outlook to the 
north and west, we determined to attempt Wind- 
ham High Peak by compass. It was Brute's in- 
troduction to the use of what he called the ''clever 
little box." 

The art of walking in the woods is susceptible 
to the perfecting influences of experience and 
thought. There are all the stages noticeable in 
other arts, from urban beginnerhood to Indian 
mastery. There are a dozen ways of putting 
down your foot. Nearly everyone, for instance, 
complains about coming downhill, because nearly 
everyone touches the ground first with the toe or 



158 THE CATSKILLS 

ball of the foot instead of with the heel. If, on a 
down grade, you put your heel down first, and, al- 
lowing your foot to rock forward, end your step 
with the toes, there is no jar, no strain on the 
knees. Your progress is more nearly even, and 
will approach Indian speed. 

Walking in the woods without tearing off your 
clothes, breaking your legs, and sounding like a 
steam tractor is an art. To walk through them 
to a fixed destination is a science instinctive in the 
old-timer, if we are to believe the tales, but cer- 
tainly not instinctive in the average summerer. 
Yet, if he has not reached that awful age when 
immediate comfort is the sole demand, the aver- 
age summerer is liable to want to wander in the 
woods. He is liable, I say, at least to the impulse. 
There are many considerations ready to balk him 
in the heat of his desire, — clothes, companionship, 
convenience, — but it is not impossible that he 
should find himself in the woods. Once there, it 
is equally not impossible that he should not find 
his way out. 

Or, at least, for an uncomfortable while. I 
have not heard of anybody being fatally lost in the 
Catskills for several years, although this still hap- 
pens annually in the greater forests of the Adiron- 
dacks and Maine. In the Catskills every stream 
runs by a farmhouse sooner or later, while in those 
other regions a stream is often quite content to 



OUT WINDHAM WAY 159 

end up in an uninhabited pond. Getting lost 
there is no fun even for professionals, and care- 
less wandering is no proper amusement for ama- 
teurs. In the Catskills the only danger would be 
disablement ; for, granting legs, any fool can fol- 
low water. 

The compass supplies the necessary element of 
safety to all who walk the woods. Mostly it is 
just your friend. But in the stress of doubt it 
must be your dictator. It draws you your straight 
line and commands you to follow it. Working by 
it is a test of faith in one 's self. You throw your- 
self into the wilds with that magnetic phantom 
up near Hudson's Bay for your sole ally. Your 
life hangs, not like Damocles' upon a thread, but 
upon a needle. The test comes some day, when, 
in the twist of a swamp or the sudden disposition 
of the sun to wander, you disbelieve. The needle 
points wrong. The silly box is ailing, seems no 
longer inspired. Perhaps, you think, the iron in 
your knife or in some rock has addled it. But woe 
if your faith wobble. 

Or, again, perhaps you Ve confused the tips of 
the needle. You think the silver tip points north 
instead of the iron. That is a fatal self-sugges- 
tion. One doubt is equivalent to one demise. A 
doctor can as easily perform an autopsy upon him- 
self as you straighten out your fancy if you have 
allowed that thought to come There are two ways 



160 THE CATSKILLS 

of escape, either of which must be prepared be- 
forehand. Buy a compass with N marked on the 
proper end of the needle, or on the back of the box 
scratch some designation by which you shall know 
in the hour of trial. Scratch this before you leave 
home. Otherwise there is sure to come a mo- 
ment when the world turns upside down and water 
runs uphill, and, like the children of Nineveh, you 
cannot tell your right hand from your left. 

We reached the top of Windham when shad- 
ows were shortest. Opal lands fled from our 
mountain 's foot and into the mellow haze of noon, 
dark woodlot and white farm alternating until 
they were lost in their vague companionship. 

We had our lunch on the top of the mountain, in 
a dining-room walled with small firs, carpeted 
with snow, ceilinged with remote white clouds, 
and pictured with glimpses of the bottomlands. 
It was furnished with a rock for table, a log for 
chairs. A slow-moving breeze came through the 
balsam windows, and the chirp of snow-birds with 
the call of the chickadee were our entertainment. 
Peace, comfort, that inner harmony, which alone 
is supreme happiness, were ours. 

**Down there they 're running about and worry- 
ing just like us a few days ago," said Brute, *'and 
here we are as free and easy as a school of fish. 
Why can't we keep this feeling down there?" 

** Full-size people do." 




Photograph l.y llowar.l Burtt 



Valley of the Westkill 



OUT WINDHAM WAY 163 

**Well, to-day '11 fit us for a size larger, any- 
way. ' ' 

The top of the plateau was cross-harried with 
the tracks of snowshoe rabbits. I should like to 
have had along one of these literary naturalists 
who read so easily their storiettes in the snow. 
Here was a volume of Dumas cut into serial 
lengths and published without the pages being 
numbered. The boy and I attempted to unravel 
a detective story in forty parts written by a large 
jack-hare. But he brought in so many charac- 
ters and acted so unaccording to Doyle that we lost 
the thread in the general scramble. The news- 
paper of the wild is dramatic, captivating, and 
different from others, because it prints only the 
news. But it is easy to overlook, difficult to de- 
cipher, and editions succeed each other so fast, 
at least in rabbit-land, that it is impossible to keep 
up with the times. 

The only way to read animal news-sheets or to 
enjoy nature in any of her embodiments is to obey 
the dictates not of conscience but of the heart. 
There is a certain type of earnest soul who frets 
herself into discontent because she is not making 
the most of her opportunity. If she is in the 
woods, the fact that she does not know the names 
of all the mosses worries her. Because she has 
the chance she ought to improve it, she says — 
admirable ambition, but miserable practice. I 



164 THE CATSKILLS 

believe that the true nature-lover is a more desul- 
tory kind. He does not castigate himself because 
he feels, as July comes on, that his interest in 
birds is waning. Even the birds' interest in each 
other wanes then. He does not prod himself into 
a fury of investigation over the different fungi, 
careering through the woods with four volumes 
under his arms. He goes about his fishing, and 
notes the fungi by the way. 

Nature will not suffer herself to be gone at, 
hammer and tongs. Neither is she an example 
of steadiness. The man who allows his moods 
to follow hers lets less escape him than the man 
who must enjoy nature at any cost. A goal can 
be a fatal barrier to progress. 

''"Would n't it be bully to spend enough time up 
here to get full of it!" exclaimed Brute. 

A summer night on a mountain-top makes time 
standards seem incoherent. You begin to size up 
eternity after you 've spent about an hour on your 
back looking up — at Night. 

"It 's pretty huge," I said, "but I 'd like to do 
it again." 

"I '11 do it with you," said Brute, putting out 
his hand. 

I took it, but limited the moon in which we 
should take our dip into eternity with a specifica- 
tion of warmth. As my memory groped back to 
that other time on Tahawus' top with Lynn, it 



OUT WINDHAM WAY 165 

also brought back that great line about Mount 
Blanc : 
*'And visited all night by troops of stars." 

We sauntered along the ridge of Windham High 
Peak, speculating on the airs of hares, and ex- 
amining the tracks of deer to discover the sex, 
size, and state of mind. The afternoon was in 
mid-bloom, and very still. All the beasts heard 
us before we saw them. In one place deer tracks 
showed that a certain south-facing depression 
was a favorite haunt, and we found where they 
had slept. The whole mountain seemed a pre- 
ferred range of theirs. Although the gradual in- 
crease of population is islanding the wooded 
heights and limiting their grounds, the game-war- 
dens know their job, and if the State will make 
central sanctuaries wherein there shall be abso- 
lutely no killing there should be deer enough to 
grace the whole Catskill country. Unfortunately, 
deer do not distinguish sufficiently between their 
own provender and hand-grown cabbages. They 
draw no distinctions between wild oats and do- 
mestic. It is possible to consider the gentle doe 
that regularly devours your corn as — anything 
but an object of love. There are better ways 
than extinction, however, of excluding even the 
unruly doe. 

East Windham is a pleasant village for sound 



166 THE CATSKILLS 

sleep, and in the morning the inhabitants have 
merely to roll over in bed to exchange their views 
of dark wooded heights for variable plains. The 
expanse of lowland to the northeast wears lovely 
draperies of white mist of an early morning, and 
at all times is a barometer to depend on. In 
clear weather the farms and woodlots and hedge- 
rows, villages and fattened hills, shine out with 
clear outlines, like a Mozart melody. But, when 
a change is making the color harmonies grow 
richer, the counterpoint becomes confused, and 
one hears Debussy's ''Afternoon of a Faun" 
blending into twilight adagios of Beethoven. 
Then, if there should be a moon, down the valley 
sound the flutes and violins of Mendelssohn, elfin- 
wise. It was well when the first settler slept on 
the eaves of such a view. . . . 

"Are you asleep?" I followed up my inquiry 
with a pillow. 

Brute opened an eye and grinned, the very pic- 
ture of a loafer, sunburned with snow-glare, 
sprawling beneath much blanket, limp and lazy 
as an invalid. Suddenly his nature changed. He 
grabbed a pillow and let it hail upon me, gently 
as a pile-driver, shouting: 

''Sure ; I 'm sound asleep. This is only a night- 
mare. ' ' 

The nightmare, unhitched and quite untract- 
able, raged until the furniture began to show signs 



OUT WINDHAM WAY 167 

of wear. Yet exercise that would have left us 
faint two weeks before seemed but a trifling ap- 
petizer now, and at the breakfast-table we deter- 
mined on a genuine cross-country from mountain- 
top to mountain-top, which we named the Stunt 
of the Seven Summits. Nor need it mar the 
alliterative effect to say that ere nightfall we 
did nine. 

Have you ever felt so fit that it hurts to be 
still? That is where a walking trip will put you 
if you don't exceed your strength at first. Good 
sleep, good food, and a refusal to fatigue is the 
result of regular stint — say ten miles at first, 
which will become twenty at last. The habit of 
ten miles in the morning, six in the afternoon and 
four after supper is soon acquired, and becomes, 
I may say without trying for effect, almost inci- 
dental to the day's work. Once acquired, how one 
scorns the mood that tempted one to sit on club 
porches or, worse, within sealed libraries! Yet, 
once more at home, the dust of the road falls from 
one, the trolley, the automobile, or the train must 
be taken for a two-mile trip, the window-seat is 
tenable only if the window be closed. It hurts to 
move. Thus does flesh round out the intellect I 

The Stunt of the Seven Summits looked well 
on paper. The range of mountains that begins 
so auspiciously at Acra Point, and takes even more 
credit to itself for Windham High Peak, does 



168 THE CATSKILLS 

obeisance at East Windham before it continues 
its course northwestward. It was to puff — the 
first pull that brought us to the summit of Mount 
Zoar. Although there had been a crisp frost, the 
air seemed to intimate that there was a softness 
just around the corner. While we kept to the 
sun-sheltered side of the ridge the snow was 
comfortably hard and progress fast. We soon 
reached Ginseng, summit number two, and were 
careful not to take the spur, which lures one to 
the south. Keeping along the ridge for an hour 
or more, we were only a little bothered by con- 
tours and not much by brush. Occasionally the 
ax, a slightly larger brother of the small "scout" 
ax, was a help, and the map, eked out by observa- 
tion and a few timely hints from the compass, got 
us safely to number three, Mt. Hayden. 

Next came Nebo. He who named these peaks 
had evidently primed himself well with the Old 
Testament before setting out on his christening 
expedition. He didn't make use of all his oppor- 
tunities, for there was an eerie place that the 
Witch of Endor might have utilized, and to the 
north obviously ran the Valley of Jehoshaphat. 
We hastened over to Pisgah, a scorner of Nebo 
with an altitude of 2,885. By this time we were 
so elated with our progress on the large-scale 
map that we spurned the easy road that we had 
had to cross. A large-scale map is valuable, 



OUT WINDHAM WAY 169 

among other things, for just this propelling 
power. It is discouraging to crawl through thick- 
ets and clamber up ravines from dawn till dusk, 
only to find that you have advanced an inch on 
the map. But, where every inch means a mile, 
a good day will take you from sheet to sheet, and 
lure you by that appeal to voracity so deeply 
planted in every true American. You will eat 
up the miles by the finger-length. 

On Pisgah we had lunch, and from it a view 
that would have done credit to Zion. Westward 
extends a ridge from which the ground falls away 
with all the emphasis of parachuting. Then there 
is a broadening out of the summit, which takes to 
itself the name of Richtmyer Peak. Thence our 
course shifted to southwest for another hour, and 
upon Richmond Mountain, 3,213 feet, grew a 
spruce from which spread a view over new lands. 
There was considerable haze, but we could make 
out the basin-like valley of the Manorkill on the 
northwest. On the west rose Huntersfield, while 
to the south Ashland sat at the bottom of long 
slopes. 

We were now getting fairly tired. The snow 
was soft everywhere, and suddenly our efforts be- 
came noticeable. Our wanderings wouldn't have 
been more than ten miles for a crow, but we 
were n 't crows and some of them had been vertical. 
We had passed Ashland Pinnacle when the ques- 



170 THE CATSKILLS 

tion had to be answered: should we do Hunters- 
field? It loomed dark against the sun. There 
was something satanically inviting in the idea of 
topping this culmination of the range. Besides, 
it would be our tenth peak. Who invented the 
decimal system, anyway ! It was that decided us, 
I believe. 

A traveler possessed of either ambition or a 
sense of duty must never blame others for his 
misfortunes. If this human monstrosity aims at 
a mountain-peak that is over his height, and then 
in the face of obstacles persists in directing him- 
self toward it, he can expect to be lonely and un- 
happy. Brute and I were to experience the re- 
ward of such virtues in a measure unprecedented 
in our ethical past. Quite exhausted by our moral 
victory in deciding to continue, we sat down to 
rest on number nine, called Lost Mountain. Had 
we only accepted the omen of this name, had we 
been the slightest bit open to pagan superstition, 
we might have been spared the crown of martyr- 
dom that we were about to wear. But, alas, there 
was no such tendency in our make-up. We must 
surmount Huntersfield or perish, we said. We 
surmounted it — and perished. 

I can truthfully lay our undoing to the cat. It 
was getting distressfully late, and we were very 
tired. But we came to something that could have 
been nothing else but what it was — a wild-cat's 



OUT WINDHAM WAY 171 

track. Although I had never seen one, there was 
no mistaking the pussy-paws, as large as a man's 
palm, in the soft snow; the single track that fol- 
lowed one fallen log after another, occasionally 
making jumps of a couple of yards; the occa- 
sional detour around a bush, perhaps for birds. 
We had listened to enough stories about wild-cats 
to be a little suspicious of their presence, for the 
common is rarely made a marvel of by woods- 
men; but, on the other hand, wild-cat skins were 
brought in, two or three a winter. Here we were 
on the trail of one. It is not to be wondered at 
that we let the sun go his way while we went ours 
and the cat's. 

A stimulus like that completely banishes the 
tired feeling. We followed our beast for a mile 
or more, then lost it in a den^e thicket — lost it, 
not because of the denseness, but because the sun, 
which had been withdrawing little by little like 
a woman at a court presentation, suddenly turned 
and bolted. It left us not only in the dark, but in 
the woods somewhere, the place not specified. 
Brute looked at me, and I looked at him. As we 
couldn't see each other very plainly, it didn't 
matter. 

My only criticism of the Catskills as mountains 
is their reluctance to come to the point. If Hun- 
tersfield had been a Rocky Mountain, all we should 
have had to do would have been to keep going up, 



172 THE CATSKILLS 

with assurance that we should finally be able to 
balance on the apex. Huntersfield, so aptly 
named, we could tell from the map as well as from 
experience with other Catskills, was a nest of asso- 
ciate tops, the highest of which would be dis- 
guised by forest, deceptive slopes, and a level 
summit. Our one object was clearly to reach a 
house, and not to bother with a peak that would 
play a sort of mountain tag with us. Yet we 
preferred to come out on the south side, and 
thought that, if possible, we might take in the 
crest of the ridge on the way. 

It is not generally realized that there are very 
few nocturnal animals, that is, animals that pre- 
fer the hours of night between ten and four. Al- 
most all animals prefer the two twilights, after 
sunset and before dawn, for their roaming. This 
is a preference that Brute and I can now very 
readily understand. Twilight for us, though 
ominous, was distinctly agreeable compared to the 
inner darkness that soon bundled us up and stowed 
us away in its light-tight compartment. If all 
the poets who sing about the stars could recognize 
how very feeble they are, they might take up in- 
candescent bulbs or something worth while. That 
night I would have traded in all the glories of 
Orion for one electric torch. 

Our assets were a few matches, a great deal of 
time, and Brute's temperament. Not that the 



OUT WINDHAM WAY 173 

things he said were such pearls of either wit or 
wisdom, but his running comment and the warm 
contagion of his laugh were balm to fatigue. He 
extemporized a song on mountain-climbing, with 
the refrain, ''Every little bit more is a little bit 
less," and we plodded up with hunger and weari- 
ness held temporarily at bay. 

Nothing is very difficult if you tackle it in small 
enough bits. Quite careless of consequences now, 
we bent all our energies upon not breaking our 
legs. We also aimed uphill. Occasionally a light 
spot would deceive, and often a mass of evergreen 
detain us ; otherwise it was n 't so bad. Yet we 
dare not go fast. Even at our snail pace, a dead 
limb caught Brute 's trousers, and I heard the rip. 
''Ain't we just tearin' along!" was his comment. 

For an hour we went up grade. We must have 
gone a mile. Then, as unexpectedly as rewards 
should come, came ours. The trees fell away on 
all sides of us ; the ineffectual stars once more as- 
sumed their sovereignty. We were on the peak of 
either Huntersfield or some other mountain just 
as good, and the idea that dwells on all mountain- 
tops occurred to Brute and me at the same mo- 
ment. 

"We shook on it this morning; are you game?" 
I asked. 

"I 'd rather stay here a week than grub my 
way down in that blackness." 



174 THE CATSKILLS 

Thus it came about that we set ourselves the 
job of being comfortable in the snow, with noth- 
ing between us and the North Star. 

The night was quiet and the temperature only 
a few degrees below freezing. It was but little 
labor to scrape away the snow from a rock-ledge, 
to upholster it with branches from the small 
balsams, to start a fire. "With the fire going, it 
was easy to get more substantial wood, and in 
the light and warmth a midnight snack of raisins, 
crackers, and chocolate found its way to a place 
predestined to enjoy it. 

Then we talked. While the things we talked 
about were not very relevant to this book I can 
say that they helped to light that gulf of darkness 
between man and man that can never be entirely 
penetrated, but that broadens from the spark of 
acquaintance through the faint glow of intimacy 
into the steady shine of friendship. Later we 
both nodded off. 

I woke to find the east red in the face from 
the cold, our fire out, and gray clumps of frosted 
bushes huddling in the dim light. Brute stirred. 
In two hours we were discussing the day's plans 
over griddle-cakes and coffee in a hospitable farm- 
house kitchen near Red Falls. 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE WINTER WOODS 

THE Catskills are a happy meeting-ground of 
north and south. In spring they are not too 
far north to attract and harbor tropic birds, or to 
nourish flowers that must have warmth. In win- 
ter they are not too far south to know the arctic 
visitants and the dry cold of the perfect season. 
The Catskills give you the open hard-wood for- 
est, and yet surprise you with an aromatic moun- 
tain-top of balsam or a ravine of aged hemlock. 
The Catskills protect animals that you might 
fancy a trip to Hudson's Bay would scarcely re- 
veal. I have been told that even the pine marten 
is still caught there yearly. In fact, the Catskills, 
one hundred miles from New York City, can sat- 
isfy more outdoor aspirations than the ordinary 
aspirer can aspire to. It takes a very complete 
nature-lover to cover the Catskills and wish for 
more. Go to the Catskills and go crazy — that is, 
if you are at all susceptible to the crowding inter- 
ests of nature at her wealthiest. And if you have 
never gone in winter, go then. 

Without winter our race would never have ac- 

175 



176 THE CATSKILLS 

quired thrift or the strong fiber of reliance which 
that season, throwing a man back upon his slender 
resources, gives. Winter in the northern woods 
inculcates thrift and stanchness of relation. 
There can be no hit-or-miss about life where the 
next day may snow you up for the winter. There 
can be no extravagances with one's store of re- 
sources, either material or spiritual, when one is 
at bay before abysmal cold and the outer dark- 
ness of long nights. 

On the other hand, if the year is stripped for the 
great fight, and if the lighter friends have blown 
to sunnier lands, there is recompense awaiting you. 
The skies were never more beautiful, the few birds 
never cheerier, and the circle round the hearth 
has time now to know you and be known. 

It is the winter birds that appreciate the slender 
store of life. There are three who will be good 
company for you on a snowshoe walk. The nut- 
hatches are a busy crowd. Head down and some- 
times clinging to the under side of limbs, they 
ransack poplars and spruces. They have a 
squeaky little cry, and are too much engaged to 
pay you attention, and so you can keep along with 
them. Have an eye out for the red-breasted nut- 
hatch. He is rarer than the white-breasted. 
With them the little downy woodpecker will be 
seen, trying hard, poor chap, to keep the pace, 
and consequently losing in thoroughness. He 



THE WINTER WOODS 177 

can't do half a tree to the nuthatch's one, but he 
doesn't let it worry him. The spot of flame at 
the back of his head gives just the spark of fancy 
needed in the somber forest. Occasionally one 
may see the rarer hairy woodpecker, a bigger 
cousin and rather taciturn. 

The chickadee completes the usual trio, and I 
like him best of all. He is known by his black 
cap. He is never well groomed, like the snow- 
bird, and looks as if he had just been roughing 
life in his back woods ; but he has a warmer heart 
than the snow-bird, and is found in just the places 
where you need somebody like him for compan- 
ionship. Go up Slide or Windham or Hunter on 
one of those brilliant winter days when there is 
nothing around but the universe, and you will be 
thankful for the honest little chickadee. 

The crow will not be friends with me. Indeed, 
I cannot say that I know a single crow intimately. 
There are lots of other birds that one doesn't 
expect to be familiar with. A warbler is, at best, 
a foreigner with a letter of introduction. A buz- 
zard is of a class that one does not receive. A 
hawk is a free-booter. An eagle is His Majesty, 
before whom you should not presume to more than 
bow. But the crow is my neighbor, and I rather 
resent his aloofness. I like his voice on October 
evenings, and I like the glitter of his wings in 
March. But his nonchalant way of flying slowly 



178 THE CATSKILLS 

off when I come over the hill is the cut direct. 
He has a sense of humor, or is dumber than I 
thought. The other day I saw him chase his own 
shadow as a cat its tail. He was flying over a 
sloping meadow of bronzed grasses. Three times 
he swooped, and each time his shadow joined him 
as he struck the grass. Whether it was his 
shadow that he was after, or merely a mouse, 
I can't say. But why three times? 

Then, there are two friends of winter that I 
call my wood-pile birds. The blue-jay always 
comes around to see what is doing when I get out 
the ax. He is very curious, but will never quite 
admit it. He skulks around, and works up con- 
siderable indignation if there is no notice taken. 
But, for all his apparent temper and harsh scold- 
ing, he is enjoying it. He likes to be about and 
to be admired, and, as he is a fine sight between 
logs, we are both suited. When the cardinal 
comes round, I am content. The cardinal is some- 
thing to give thanks for. In spring, when his 
song attains a haunting richness of tone, he is as 
perfect as a courtier can be. The song is but a 
sweet whistle, a prelude — to what? Ah! that is 
his secret — and yours. He starts the melody. 
You are a poor lover if your heart cannot go on 
with it. 

All bird songs are like that. They all start 
something that they will not finish. The purple 



THE WINTER WOODS 181 

finch, warbling so exquisitely from the new-green 
poplars, even the hermit-thrush beginning his di- 
vine arpeggios in the shadowy valley, cannot sat- 
isfy the rapture they inspire. It takes all of 
spring to round out the orb of the meadow-lark's 
first song. So blame not the cardinal if he but set 
the key. 

The junco, whose snow-white tail feathers cheer 
you like a chance ''hello," is the chummiest of all 
the winter friends. But he does n 't tell you much. 
Just a chip, chip and a flirt of the tail. He is al- 
ways trig, always trusting, and often the only 
scrap of life left in a snow-drowned world. 

Sometimes a cedar-waxwing, the aristocrat be- 
side whom the cardinal is a dowdy, sits on a bush 
and watches me work in my flannel shirt. I know 
that I am quite out of place in his society. He 
often whispers to his mate about me. But none 
of it ever reaches my ears. They are the quietest 
of birds. Exquisitely groomed and crested, the 
two will sit on a juniper bush and eat the berries, 
but genteelly and without haste, as though eating 
were beneath them. Never have I seen a wax- 
wing disheveled, crowded, angry, or in danger. 
They are above enemies, one would infer from 
their manner. If they die at the hands of owls, 
I doubt not that they feel contempt to the end for 
their vulgar foe. They allow you to approach 
with ease near enough to see the yellow band 



182 THE CATSKILLS 

across the tail and the wax tips of their wing- 
quills. 

There are a number of other winter birds in the 
Catskills — the tufted titmouse and the winter 
wren and the golden-crowned kinglet and the 
hawks and owls, shrikes, pine siskins, redpolls, 
crossbills, buntings, wandering sparrows, — the 
eagle, who, soaring, seems to cover a county in 
each circle, — there are lots of birds that these win- 
ter woods, which seem so barren of all life, dis- 
close. 

Also, there are a great many animals — how 
many nobody can ever guess with a very near ap- 
proach to accuracy. Varying in numbers, chang- 
ing their range, sometimes hibernating, sometimes 
hiding with their young, a walker cannot even pre- 
suppose what he is to see. That gives a spice to 
rambles, and strings unexpected pleasures upon 
a day's jaunt as close as swallows on a wire. 

Winter is the time to find friends among the 
animals. In spring they are busy with their chil- 
dren, and in autumn with their mates. In sum- 
mer food is plenty, and they lie snug. In winter 
they must be abroad, all except the seven sleepers 
and the few who can live on their stores; and to 
be abroad in winter means to leave one's tale be- 
hind one. 

The Catskill forest is a capacious storehouse of 
beechnuts and forage, and the meadows are alive 



THE WINTER WOODS 183 

with mice. This combination enables a veritable 
menagerie to live easily and in unexpected num- 
bers. Take your snowshoes and wander back into 
the Peekamose country, or tramp and camp in 
the wild tangles of the upper Bushkill, and you 
will hear and read in the snow more woodland 
gossip than you 'd have dared suspect. 

The impression one gets from the snow is that 
the forest is a parade-ground. Between storms 
the squirrels have time to visit every tree, the 
deer to do intricate patterns by the mile, the foxes 
to trot to all the interesting places, and the snow- 
shoe rabbits to fill in the intervening spaces with 
hop, skip, and jump. Yet how many do you see 
in a day's walk? One squirrel, no deer, no fox, 
no rabbit. But take heart. That 's the first day. 
On the second your eyes are wider open. In a 
week — well, I shall not prophesy, for a good deal 
depends on whether you last out a week. But 
there are at least twenty animals that you may 
have seen. 

In the Catskills the squirrel crowd is well repre- 
sented, and, for a beginning, pays as well to fol- 
low up as any. In fact, to watch any animal is 
to become interested. The one watched becomes 
the most interesting in the world. A red squir- 
rel at hand outweighs a rhinoceros somewhere 
else. 

Along the road that I had to travel frequently 



184 THE CATSKILLS 

there lived three red squirrel families in the space 
of a mile. It was a sort of squirrel parkway. 
Several times a day the little fellow who sits in the 
shadow of his tail would scamper by me, always 
using the same aerial route. It was a strange 
route, as jagged as the sky-line of the Eockies — 
up a big locust, down by a cedar, and jump. In 
some lights the sun shone warm on his back, which 
was the color of Barbarossa's beard. His home 
was in a woodpecker 's hole — a lately ousted wood- 
pecker, if the feathers meant anything. How the 
youngsters are trained to all the leaps and dash- 
ings that every young squirrel should know is a 
marvel I have not yet seen through. It is worth 
a summer to follow their fortunes from start to 
finish. 

The finish comes not by broken leg so often as 
by weasel or by hawk. A red squirrel lives for 
five or six years, and there are only four reasons 
why he can escape without a fracture for every 
bone in his body: the length of his fur, his tail, 
his spread of limb, which makes for an almost 
spiritual lightness, and his agility, which is worthy 
of an Ariel. 

There is some fun observing the red squirrel, 
because he never roams far, does not hibernate, is 
always into something, and will parley with you — 
at least, while the food lasts. He is about a foot 
long, half of it tail. He stores his food. He does 



THE WINTER WOODS 185 

not migrate. The family comes in May. His 
food consists of seeds, nuts, berries, and birds' 
eggs. He lives in fear of hawks and owls, but 
you 'd never know it. 

Many men in the Catskills told me that the gray 
squirrel was plentiful, but I saw very few. It is 
common knowledge that the red squirrel, who de- 
spises and bullies the gray, always wins in disputes 
for territory. I found the reds everywhere, and 
am quite ready to draw the private conclusion that 
the lumbering, improvident, and cowardly gray is 
already fairly scarce, and becoming scarcer. 

The chipmunk flourishes, and for those of us 
who do not demand wolves and mountain lions 
to whet our appetites little Tam will furnish 
amusement. There is sure to be a stone-pile, a 
woody ledge, a labyrinth of brambles near your 
house, and almost as sure to be a chipmunk there. 
Every clear day I sat at work, backed up to a pine, 
with needles for cushions and chipmunks for com- 
pany. The vestibule to the chipmunkery was un- 
der a fallen spruce, and a dozen times an hour the 
elder chip would come out of his hole, survey the 
scene, scamper along the logs or over my legs, 
and fall to storing tree-seeds in his cheek-pouches. 
In the course of the entire sununer never once did 
he neglect to look over the scene before leaving his 
hole, never once bounce right out and trust to luck 
that I wouldn't eat him. That particular family 



186 THE CATSKILLS 

must have lived very well the next spring, when 
the hunger-hour struck. Among other things, 
they had stored about a pound of chocolate cara- 
mels, which I did n 't intend them to have. I won- 
der if the youngsters were given one if they were 
good? 

A chipmunk is about six inches long, with three 
more for tail, and is known by his stripes. He is 
not supposed to climb, but those caramels were on 
a six-foot shelf, reached via a higher roof, a ledge, 
and a window. Did the ground hackee smell them 1 
Was he on a general exploring expedition? Does 
he usually explore so high ? And how did he make 
the shelf? I would like to have stayed through 
the fall. When did Dad Hackee go to sleep? For 
how long? Did he help with the children's edu- 
cation? 

Curiosity may kill the cat, but it creates the 
other beasts for us. Of course, ground hackees 
are small deer for ponderous intellects. Yet 
Burns was not above writing about a louse, and 
who will set himself above Burns ? If you will lay 
aside your newspaper, sir, or your knitting, 
madam, and make the acquaintance of Tamias 
Striatus, if you will put some intimate questions 
to him, you will find that you know almost nothing 
about this animal within your gates. He will be 
as remunerative of interest as a fond gazelle. 
Keep a journal for Tammy, a camera set, some 



THE WINTER WOODS 187 

food at hand. It need not necessarily be choco- 
late caramels. 

Perhaps I exaggerate, but some days it seemed 
to me that there must be a woodchuck for every 
native of the Catskills. They were not only bob- 
bing in and out of their holes in the fields; they 
were also continually dodging back into roadside 
weeds, turning on wood trails and sneaking off, or 
coughing at me from behind rocks. The farmers, 
whose fields they are forever turning into ani- 
mated subways, hate them. They are shot, 
trapped, poisoned, and probably ferreted. They 
flourish. Other animals, as Thompson Seton says, 
all die before their time. But the woodchuck 
sees his out, living in clover in the summer and in 
his own-steam-heated apartment in the winter, fat, 
idle, lazy, aldermanic, a fit survivor of Diedrich 
Knickerbocker's race. 

There are some questions I would have you dis- 
cover the answers to, since I can find no facts and 
cannot bring my wits to conjure fit reasons for. 
How does this beast, who never exercises, remain 
so surprisingly agile that he can turn his two feet 
of puddin'-bag flesh in his hole fifteen times a 
quarter of an hour? How does he survive the fox, 
who is as a town lawyer to this country priest? 
How does he maintain himself in the midst of a 
circumambient hate? How does he get enough 
liquid from the dew (for he does not drink water) 



188 THE CATSKILLS 

to placate the demands of his physiology, partic- 
ularly since his idea of a saturnalia is to lie out by 
the day in the torrid sun ? 

After watching a woodchuck through an opera- 
glass for an hour or so, stowing clover, one gets 
new standards of gluttony. In the fall he eats by 
the day. Clearly the future of man is not along 
the alimentary canal. We have come that way. 
Everything that can be accomplished by eating 
has been tried by the ostrich, the bear, and the 
woodchuck. He is the vegetarian's best example. 
He is also the original sun-worshiper. The Old 
Man of the Pasture preaches to over-busy people 
in terms of success. He continues to inherit the 
earth. His mood is perpetual patience, his song 
a monody of ecstatic sloth. If you wish for 
perfect content, you must pray to be a woodchuck. 

It was not quite characteristic that I should 
have come on my fox in the way in which I did — 
rounding a corner of the wood path and finding 
him playing with a broken weed. He was a bit 
astonished, and yet disdained to appear excited, 
trotting down the trail several yards before jump- 
ing into the bushes. Yet I cannot believe that I 
surprised him. One does not surprise foxes. 

Foxes must eat, in winter particularly, and, as 
they are not supernaturally borne over snow, they 
must leave a track, a single line of little pads. It 
is not only possible to read the continued story; it 



THE WINTER WOODS 189 

is quite possible to have a hand in it yourself. I 
know a family of five brothers, long-winded and 
long-legged, who, after familiarizing themselves 
with Reynard's usual run, set out to trail him 
down in relays. As twenty-five miles is a fair run 
for a fox, and as they are good for forty, they 
sometimes get the red ones. The gray take too 
soon to cover. For any set of athletes it is a mag- 
nificent game, in which every minute pays its 
share of the pleasure. 

Both gray and red foxes are found in the Cats- 
kills. The grays seem to be driving out the reds, 
and are destroying the ruffled grouse. I have 
never seen the young of the gray, but the sight of 
the tawny cubs of the red playing together is a 
sight that a man will never forget. The spotted 
faun, surprised in the deep wood, and leaping 
away into almost instant invisibility, is possibly 
the supreme vision of the wild-wood. But baby 
foxes, with their soft fur running through every 
change of gold and yellow-brown, white-throated 
and big-headed, are more playful than Puck's 
children, and an entrancing sight. 

The fox loves the border-lands best. He lives 
on meadow-mice and his neighbor's fowls, or 
rather on those of his neighbor but one. He is 
said to spare the nearest farm for strategy's sake. 
I don 't know how true this is. 

Also the cottontail is most content when near 



190 THE CATSKILLS 

civilization. She sits in her own form by day, but 
in some one else's garden by night, and is ready 
to incur the ranging dog rather than have to travel 
too far for her cabbage. 

On the contrary, her cousin, the varying hare, — 
the white rabbit of the vernacular, but the snow- 
shoe rabbit of the naturalist, — prefers the willow 
swamp and the copsy highlands of serener woods. 
Certainly there is no more interesting place in 
which to have a Catskill cabin than up one of 
those valleys such as Big Injin or the Beaverkill, 
where, just within the fringe of hemlocks, one gets 
the best of both environments. At one's back 
door lies the shadowy hinterland of forest and 
invisible beasts; at one's front the open hill and 
dale, peopled with a more metropolitan menagerie. 
Eitherwhere live multitudes, unseen and unsus- 
pected. But, if you choose well, you can share 
the fortunes of those who fancy darkness as well 
as of those who love the light. 

The snowshoe rabbit is recognized by his very 
long ears, his hind legs that crook up in the back 
because they are so long, his rusty brown of sum- 
mer and his pure white coat in winter, and — most 
interesting of all — his moult in the autumn and 
spring. In the autumn the change to white be- 
gins with his feet, the patches widening upward 
from the legs and back from the ears. In the 
spring the order is reversed. 



THE WINTER WOODS 191 

Brute and I found evidences of these hares on 
every snowy summit that we mounted. They had 
scampered across wide open spaces, though lov- 
ing the thickets most. Their broad pads lifted 
them fairly well in the light snow, and very well 
when it had hardened a little. The few we 
watched did not seem to be very hungry, although 
the vernal appetite is much the keenest. Six-foot 
leaps on the mountain-tops were not unusual, but 
the ones we scared did not seem in any hurry to 
leave. Whether they play in the moonlight, as 
some naturalists announce, we could not tell. 
Certainly none came to act before us that night 
on Huntersfield. But, from the maze of tracks 
on Slide, I should judge that they held regular 
nightly hops, moon or no moon. 

A great deal could be done with a note-book on 
Slide. The largest leaps could be measured, the 
shrubs examined to discover their larders, the 
earliest appearance after the big snows deter- 
mined, their places of concealment during snows 
found, the normal range estimated, and the years 
of frequency counted. When all this data had 
been collected, it could be compared with Ernest 
Thompson Seton's authoritative work in "Life 
Histories of Northern Mammals, ' ' the most fasci- 
nating narrative of animal existence that I have 
had the luck to fall upon. Mr. Seton is popularly 
supposed to fashion the straight line of veracity 



192 THE CATSKILLS 

into an artistic halo for his animals; but in this 
thousand-page master-work every authority is 
cited, every rumor credited as such. To be sure, 
there is the glamour of personality throughout 
the two volumes, the adjective that brings a smile, 
the fancy that enhances the fact. The facts, how- 
ever, are there, quite undiluted with fancy. The 
result is that people who would turn away from 
museum reports turn to these biographies, and 
when the book is closed return to the woods and 
fields with a tremendous appetite aroused. 

There is sure to be a porcupine living within a 
mile of your Catskill cottage. Some night he will 
smell salt, a smell more alluring to him than blood 
to a hungry tiger. If you give him time, he will 
gnaw down the house about your ears for that 
grain of salt. He will not, however, shoot his 
quills at you. Nor can he escape you running: 
So chase him up a tree, tie a white towel about it, 
and let him wait till morning. If it be a hemlock, 
he will begin on his next meal right away. He is 
an irritable beast, and as unsociable as a wood- 
chuck. Porcupines chatter in a shrill, teeth-grit- 
ting way when they are disturbed. Do not ap- 
peal to their reason. They have none. Yet do 
not trust their quiescence. That tail will slap like 
a camera-shutter, leaving you with the appear- 
ance and feeling of a pin-cushion. The quills 
have to be cut out, being barbed, and are the quint- 



THE WINTER WOODS 193 

essence of scJirecklichkeit in a brutish world. 
Whatever becomes of the porcupine in winter, he 
neither sleeps nor obtrudes his society. I do not 
know his trail. Occasionally a dog finds him, and 
sometimes a flesh-eater, crazed with hunger, tries 
the untriable and gets crazed with something else. 
Probably he stays up in his thick hemlock until it 
is stripped, only to make the short trip to an- 
other. 

While I was in Roxbury they were having a 
crusade against skunks. Skunks are fond of 
chicken in any form, and these, recently emerged 
from their long denning up, were bent on having 
some eggs at any price. It was an unfortunate 
bargain for them. 

A skunk is guessed by his stripe and taken for 
granted by his tail. The sensible man trusts to 
his senses. Yet, according to all authorities, the 
skunk is not easily irritated to action, and even 
when he feels his temper rising he gives ample 
warning to the neighbors by delicately turning his 
back and raising his tail. If the tail should spread 
and the tip rise, then let the beholder exert him- 
self and flee. Ten feet is scarcely a safe distance, 
and the smell is strong for miles. 

Skunks seem to know that security is their due. 
They are as likely to nest beneath a back porch as 
to seek seclusion in the edge of wood or swamp. 
Study of the skunk vouchsafes all the excitement 



194. THE CATSKILLS 

of a lion hunt. Yet the results are not so per- 
manent. Just bury the clothes in the wood. 

In hollow Catskill beeches breeds the coon. You 
can't mistake the little bear with his big ringed 
tail and black cheek patches. There is enough 
fish and enough green corn in the Catskill coun- 
try to make his summers bright, and he sleeps 
through the worst of winter, so his five-toed track 
is not the one you 're thinking of. 

Neither is it in the pine marten's, who lives in 
the trees, who prefers the heaviest of fir forests 
to the open woods, and who will have nothing of 
the border-lands. He is a big weasel with a big 
spot of yellow on his brown throat. 

Neither is it the otter's, for all unite in saying 
that the otter is no longer found in the Catskills. 

Neither is it the fisher's who never lived there — 
in any number, at least. 

Nor the wolverine 's, who plagues Canadian but 
not Catskill trappers. 

Nor the beaver's, who has been liberated on 
some of the western Catskill streams, but is not 
yet thoroughly established. 

But it is the mink's, who wanders by the ponds 
here and there in the western Catskills and along 
some of the wilder streams. He can be seen glid- 
ing or sometimes swimming, but never still. He 
is a black beauty, more graceful than the grayish 
'chuck, aud less ratty than the muskrat, without 



THE WINTER WOODS 195 

the stripe and flaring tail of the skunk, and easily 
distinguishable from the opossum with his rat 
tail, or the coon with its prisoner pattern. 

There are fairies, too, as reward for the diligent 
searcher. Tucked away in the recesses of the 
Catskill glens live the flying squirrels, and the 
weasel who turns white in winter, the big hoary 
bat, and a host of shrews. The little brown bat 
comes down to the villages; and where you pitch 
your tent you will entertain the most beautiful 
animal in the world, the jumping mouse, with his 
exquisite white feet and plumy tail. There are 
other mice, and a mole or two, and along the snow 
the muskrat drags his tail behind him, as meek 
as Mary's lamb — unless disturbed. 

There used to be forty-five kinds of mammals 
in the Catskills. Gone forever are the gray wolf, 
the elk, the panther, the Canada lynx, and the 
otter. The forty others are still there. Deer are 
plentiful, bear common, and wild-cats are killed 
each winter, sometimes a dozen, sometimes but 
half a dozen in the three counties, if one may esti- 
mate from hearsay. 

The wild-cat is undoubtedly the most interesting 
animal left. In early summer, if you listen, you 
will hear the shivery bark of the barred owl, which 
is sufficiently awing; but far away (yet not too 
far for creepiness) you may hear the rasping 
caterwauling of two cats. The Canada lynx in- 



196 THE CATSKILLS 

sists upon deep woods, but the wild-cat — which is 
the bay lynx and differs only from the Canadian 
in size and ability — ^will range close to farms, hide 
in wood-lots, and supplement his dietary of chip- 
munks, rabbits, and grouse, with poultry. 

It is a perfectly safe winter sport to trail the 
wild-cat, if you can. There is no record yet of 
any Catskill denizen having attacked a man, or a 
woman either, for that matter. The bear sees you 
first and takes to the next county. The deer, 
which is the most treacherous of all animals in 
captivity, will spare no pains to eliminate herself 
from your presence. The wild-cat is so beauti- 
fully agile in matted branches and along fallen 
trees that he invisibly escapes the silence-smashing 
man who is crashing toward him on two awkward 
legs. Indeed, the only animal to be feared in the 
woods is the porcupine, who, by chance, may come 
up and lick your hand in the dark. The muskrat 
has been known to attack in numbers, and in the 
dim of dusk mosquitos have been heard; but the 
wide-wood, for all of them, is freer of danger than 
one city street. 

It is easy to take the little animals for granted. 
The difficulty is in believing in bears. When we 
came upon 'Gene Kerr working in his garden, his 
rifle leaning against the house and a row of bear 
skulls grinning along the side of the barn, we had 
to believe. Later, when we had shredded our 



THE WINTER WOODS 199 

clothes in brier patches, roamed over thousands 
of square miles of blueberry desert (or so it 
seemed in the sun), and spent the night in the deep 
darkness of the Catskill forest, we began to 
doubt. And after we had poked in perfect dens 
and descended into marvelous bear havens, we 
began to resent the stupidity of bears in not mak- 
ing use of the facilities offered. 

A bear is difficult to see. Since he does n't hee- 
haw, or bark, or sing in one's ear, he has no way 
of drawing your attention. Also, being very shy, 
he will not stay in a place until you run into him. 
His notion of life in the spring is to beget and 
then get. In the fall his daily round is designed 
to make him daily rounder. And in the winter he 
sleeps it off. In January, in order to give birth 
to her young, the mother has to wake. This makes 
her crosser than a bear naturally is. It does seem 
unjust. She maintains her ill humor by not eat- 
ing or drinking for several months, being still 
denned up. All this time her two cubs are de- 
veloping from squirrel-size infants into creatures 
dog-like, then boy-like, then bear-like, until they 
are able to wander around the woods and begin to 
feed on adult provender, which is nearly every- 
thing swallowable from bugs and berries up to 
beetles and small deer. 

Owing to the excessive timidity of bears. Brute 
and I have had to take all the above information 



200 THE CATSKILLS 

from trappers and talkers of their ilk. I have 
seen their hides, their skulls, their slayers, and 
their photographs; and, putting two and two to- 
gether, I am prepared to assert that there are a 
good many yet in the Catskill country. That they 
have no inhumane intention toward human beings 
I can even more confidently assert. I have given 
them every chance. 

The deer, in comparison with the bears, behave 
in a way that is positively forward. Instead of 
running deftly away like a three-hundred-pound 
bear, they will break twigs, stamp, turn, and snort 
from behind bushes. It is n 't sensible, but it gives 
one beautiful glimpses of tawny grace, of match- 
less poise, which are fixed in the imagination for- 
ever. It is far harder to get a good view of a deer 
in the Catskills than in the Adirondacks. They 
are relatively fewer, shyer, and less accessible. In 
the Catskills there are so few open ponds and so 
few marshy meadows that one must wait long, 
walk far, or be in the uplands much to get one's 
fill of their white-tailed vanishings. Patience will 
be rewarded, however, as always, and in the snow 
can be read the long story of their existence. 

I have spoken of the winter woods as if their 
branches were thick with birds and their shrub- 
bery trodden down by a crowding mass of animals. 
That comes from letting the results of many wan- 
derings jostle each other in the corral of the 



THE WINTER WOODS 201 

printed page. To the hurried visitor the Cats- 
kills will seem birdless and creatureLss. It is for 
him who roams the woods alone and without re- 
gard to time-pieces — this revelation of almost 
spirit-like life that lives in the shadows. 

The woods, however, are there. They cannot 
slink back into hidden dens. They are the life- 
ground of innumerable activities, the great thea- 
ter of all outdoors, and the most beautiful theater 
imaginable. Even if you care nothing for the 
fascinating skunk and have never heard of the 
relentless ermine, you cannot remain obdurate to 
the charm of the stage on which they live out their 
little roles as comedian and villain. If you once 
wander back into the winding aisles where the 
hemlock droops with snow and the brook has built 
itself music-rooms of marble, you will never shake 
yourself quite free of the spell. You will always 
see something more than dark trunks and the 
vistas of white. You will feel the imminence of 
something wonderful to happen. Somehow, a new 
blessing falls upon you. Life falls into propor- 
tion. The delight of going on no longer intrudes 
upon the pleasure of staying still. And so, in the 
winter woods, you find a novel peace. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE NORTHWEST EEDOUBT 

WHEN Manitou planned his great fortress^ 
now known as the Catskills, he built the 
long battlement on the east to parallel the Hud- 
son, arranged the labyrinthine masses of inter- 
secting range in the south for Great Headquarters, 
designed a wilderness of pond and forest on the 
southwest and raised a great redoubt, now called 
Mount Utsayantha, on the northwest as a lookout 
toward the Great Lakes, whence were to come the 
predatory spirits. 

Utsayantha is 3,365 feet high, and from its sum- 
mit one is able to see spirits a good way off. To 
the north the first ranges of Adirondacks were 
plainly visible on the breezeless morning that 
adorned the world when Brute and I invested this 
redoubt of Manitou. To the west shone the long 
country that we were not to visit. The view 
looked over low hills and far away to Otsego Lake, 
where Cooper lived. To the east and south rose 
the Mountains of the Sky, the Onti Ora. 

Before I visited the Catskills I considered that 
the Indians were singularly proud or misin- 

202 



THE NORTHWEST REDOUBT 203 

formed to call their petty mounds the Mountains 
of the Sky. Pff! Mountains of the Sky! And 
what, then, were the Rockies? Mountains of the 
Seventh Heaven! And when one got to heaven? 
Borrowing trouble, perhaps. However, the Onti 
Ora seemed an uncalled-for pretension — until I 
visited the Catskills. Then I understood. Moun- 
tains of the Sky is the most beautiful and fit name 
for the refuge of Manitou. The Indians did not 
mean the high sky, the empty and interminable 
blue. They meant the low, rich, all-brooding 
heaven that settles in between the ranges with its 
wash of gentian shades. They meant the cloud- 
heaps of pearl or ivory that west winds set adrift 
from their moorings in these mountains. 

That day on Utsayantha was a reward to Brute 
and me for indulging in living. A streak of lazi- 
ness is a dangerous thing, but it is mighty pleas- 
ant. How often it wards off a lot of unprofitable 
exertion! Who is to say whether loafing for a 
whole day on a sunny mountain-top is laziness or 
life? And, whatever the verdict, the day was a 
distinct tribute to our intention. From cloudless 
morning to cloud-heaped noon, through gathering 
afternoon to gust-swept evening, we watched the 
pageant of day file across the lands. 

At the foot of Utsayantha lies the wide-streeted, 
white-painted provincial town of Stamford. Be- 
yond it, dale after dale supplies milk to the down- 



204 THE CATSKILLS 

State cities, and should supply all the fragrant 
traditions of herdsmen and cattle-keepers to 
sweeten our toiling times. In such a lovely land- 
scape one felt that men might be milder-mannered 
than those who infest the rocky fastnesses of 
cities or the equally callous wilderness. In such 
a place, if anywhere, should flourish generosity 
and genuineness, a little deeper humanity. Yet, 
in conversation with one of the citizens, Brute and 
I heard a tale of the countryside such as one of 
the world's best misers would have blushed to 
better. We began to investigate a thing or two, 
and found that the people of these homelike val- 
leys were scarcely different from other people. 
If they were no worse, they also were no better. 
Environment does not seem to warp morality for 
good or ill. The tree may grow as the twig is in- 
clined ; but there seems to be a very similar aver- 
age of inclinations everywhere. 

That evening we let ourselves down into Stam- 
ford, the first town of airs that we had penetrated 
since our clothes had begun to look strained and 
overworked. What the Stamfordians thought of 
our appearance cannot be related, for they never 
said. Nor could we care overmuch. Twenty 
miles a day is a narcotic to the pride, and much 
wayfaring, I can see, would bring on a social revo- 
lution — at least, as far as dressing for dinner. 
How ridiculous our ancestors have been! Kings 



THE NORTHWEST REDOUBT 205 

and nobles plotting and competing to live in mar- 
ble halls — unheated. Men slaving to amass gold 
and jewels, when what they really wanted was a 
hot bath. A throne, a scepter, and five neck- 
laces of rubies would not have seemed so good to 
us that night as did two turkish towels. We ar- 
rived clad in mud and slush. We left clothed in 
our right minds. Yet the only joys that had en- 
riched the interval between were never catalogued 
among the pleasures of emperors. Simplified civ- 
ilization is the height of luxury. 

However ingratiating was our stay in Stam- 
ford, we felt as do those campers who make a 
foray into a city for supplies. They arrive with 
a superior air. They depart with an apology for 
tarrying. It is as if they had demeaned them- 
selves to the extent of the necessary moments in a 
man-made place. However pleasant it felt to be 
natty. Brute and I were both for betaking our- 
selves to the wild-wood again, despite its affronts 
to our haberdashery. 

The sensation of taking the road again is very 
like that of coming out of a theater into the sun- 
light after a tedious matinee. All the tiresome 
unrealities of a wrought-up afternoon are soothed 
by the slanting sunlight. So did we issue from 
the uncomplacent porters and the call of hackmen 
into a countryside beaming with a sun that did not 
seem to have risen merely for the sake of the mom- 



206 THE CATSKILLS 

ing papers. The snow was gone on the levels, and 
the undercurrents of green, which for some days 
had been running up the brook-banks, began to 
show as a verdant torrent on the lea of southern 
hills. 

At Grand Gorge there are three directions that 
call with equal shrillness. To the northeast is 
Gilboa, where the new reservoir is being made. 
To the southeast runs the road to Devasego Falls, 
Prattsville, and Red Falls. To the south you go 
through another clove and approach Roxbury, 
delightful town. 

The two falls are worth a visit in season. Red 
Falls, where the steppy ledge breaks up the thread 
of water, runs like a melody of Schubert, clear, 
sparkling, beautiful — an eternal melody with va- 
riations. Devasego, on the other hand, particu- 
larly in the spring, is like Wagner going sym- 
phonically to pieces, Rhine maidens and all. And, 
as often happens, there are many secondary falls 
of unsung beauty nearby which are recommended 
to those whose tribulations are lightened by the 
sight of falling water. 

Prattsville was settled by one Colonel, a tanner. 
Not content with the limited immortality of 
leather, the Colonel hired him a sculptor to im- 
bust him on a cliff. To make assurance triply 
sure, he had his horse and dog done also. The in- 
quiring tourist is always directed to Pratt 's Rocks 



THE NORTHWEST REDOUBT 207 

by the wide-eyed native to see the imperishable 
features of the great man (and his great horse and 
dog) on the old Devonian rock — a lesson to all 
tanners of ambition. The trip out there is quite 
worth while — but to see the mark of the old sea- 
currents channeled on the cliff. 

There is also another record of unrecorded time 
that the praters about Pratt forget to mention. 
Beyond Prospect Hill flows a brook called Fly, 
which any good Dutchman knows was meant for 
Vly, a swamp. The Fly rises in a glacial lake. 
Mr. J. Lynn Rich of Ithaca can prove it. The 
terminal moraine is there, too. Mr. Rich says 
that the glacial marks point to a movement differ- 
ent from the usual movement of glaciers in other 
regions. Catskill valleys were not much enlarged 
by the Ice Age. Therefore there was n 't much de- 
struction of their sides or bottoms, not much de- 
tritus, hence few moraines, and so we miss the 
picture-gallery lakes that so enhance the beauty 
of the Adirondacks. 

From Lexington to Shandaken is a road, a little 
more than ten miles long, that fits into its bed be- 
tween high hills, and rests there with all the con- 
tentment of perfection. A stiff grade south of 
Westkill brings you to a summit of the pass, and to 
a charming lake where we saw a mink. In spring 
the road is bordered with woodchucks and dec- 
orated with nesting birds. In winter it is very 



308 THE CATSKILLS 

lonely, and the glimpses of ranges afar off shine 
with a remoteness accentuated by the shadows of 
the ravine. In summer these same views take on 
a more neighborly appearance that make the West- 
kill Notch a favorite with even the casual motorist 
whose engine is not getting too hot. 

It was later that we took the walk which stamped 
this valley with its completest charm for us — a 
walk that every lover of woods, the easy woods, 
should know. We had left Hunter in a morning 
fog that lifted soon into soft clouds, which, en- 
tirely pleased with earth, hung not so far above 
the hills. A mile west of Hunter on the State 
road, an iron bridge takes you across the Scho- 
harie, and a little road quickly brings you to the 
woods that cover the range. Up and up through 
the thick cover goes the little grass-grown road. 
For an hour you mount steadily, come out on a 
shaly top, descend a little, and suddenly emerge on 
the view of the Westkill Valley. If a camera 
could catch the impossible, then Brute's picture 
might show to you the atmospheric necromancy 
of our surprise. A cloud was leaving its mother- 
dale forever. A range of mountains athwart the 
west softened in the light of mid-morning. The 
valley ran below us, disappearing behind moun- 
tain shoulders, reappearing where the brook had 
widened its tenure in the course of centuries. 
Southward rose the Big Westkill, stem in its own 



THE NORTHWEST REDOUBT 209 

shadow, and still topped with cloud. Of all the 
scenes that fill one's years of memories, those are 
favorite that have come as surprise. We give 
Niagara its due, and are speechless beneath the 
Wetterhorn ; but the minor personal discoveries — 
a night of desert moonlight, some wood in Nova 
Scotia, a charming picture in an unmentioned 
nook — these cling, and to them the memory has 
recourse when it least expects. Should I tell you 
to see the Westkill Valley you might be disap- 
pointed. Should you come upon it as we did, you 
will wonder why everybody does not go that way. 
Indeed, the entire Catskill region is susceptible to 
the dangers of expectation. There have been no 
strokes of geologic lightning to rend it into stupe- 
fying gulfs. All is blended, suave. It is meant 
for those who will look twice. 



CHAPTER XV 

BIG INJIN AND HEAP BIG SLIDE 

DAME NATURE— like other dames— prefers 
not to wear the same costume twice. Brute 
and I saw enough valleys to convince us that the 
world was one vast gutter. Up glens, down ra- 
vines, along valleys did we traipse, pack-a-back, by 
day and by night, until we wondered how the re- 
gion got to be called the Catskill Mountains. 
Mountains rose here and there, but the valleys 
were one continuous performance. The moun- 
tains rose merely to oblige the valleys, to bring 
them into relief, and in return the valleys led one 
insinuatingly into the mountains. How insinu- 
atingly one could never guess until he came to the 
mouth of one and looked up. It was impossible 
to refuse the invitation — and always worded differ- 
ently. For all their hundreds, we never saw two 
valleys alike. Dame Nature is the high priestess 
of versatility. 

Shandaken is the village at the mouth of the 
Westkill Clove, and half way between the en- 
trances to the Woodland and Big Injin valleys, 

210 



BIG INJIN AND HEAP BIG SLIDE 211 

the two ways of approach to Slide Mountain. We 
chose Big Injin — named for a strapping redskin 
who got into trouble because he would murder 
people. The name, of course, has been banalized 
into Big Indian, just as in the Adirondacks we 
prefer to call the good and significant Tahawus 
Mt. Marcy. We shall continue to Germanize our 
imaginations until they starve to death, probably, 
or until somebody has the power to show us that 
there is a good deal in a name. Why hotel men, 
to mention just one class, should continue to propa- 
gate Hill Crests and Belle Vues by the hundreds, 
when they can make money out of names of dis- 
tinction, is a conundrum that does not appeal to 
one proud of American wits. 

Big Injin Valley begins with a curve that shuts 
it from the workaday world of road and rail. 
Having once wrapped itself satisfactorily in its 
air of seclusion, it starts off upon its mission of 
leading back into the heart of the wild country. 
The afternoon was as balmy as deceptive spring 
knows how to be. A wind, as tender as the bleat 
of a new-born lamb, played down the little side 
glens and whispered in the trees, until one was 
ready to believe its tale about summer being on the 
way. The stream curved from one side of the val- 
ley-bottom to the other, always clear, always rush- 
ing. Big Injin is the birth-dale of the Esopus, 
which conjures to my mind pictures equal in charm 



212 THE CATSKILLS 

to those brought back by the mention of the Rond- 
out, the Neversink, and the Schoharie. 

We rounded curve after curve on the mounting 
road, always to find some charming slope ahead 
or some group of little hemlocks meeting together. 
Always there was some glimpse of the creek 
hurrying around the corner. Instead of the Moun- 
tains of the Sky, the Indians might have called 
the country the Land of Little Rivers, for down 
each glen sprang some brook to join the bright 
Esopus. Brute and I could not help exclaiming 
about their beauty, so intangible, so unpicturable. 

It is for its streams that the Catskills has a right 
to be ranked with the great family of American 
parks. Their volume is not great compared to the 
waters of the Adirondacks or Canada, where the 
scale of things is beyond imagination. Neither is 
there unbroken forest large enough to earn the 
name of wilderness. The heart cannot leap as it 
does at the thought of the balsam-guarded glories 
of the Ausable and the Raquette, or the Abitibi 
and the Richelieu. But on a sunny afternoon in 
April, if you will go with me as I went with Brute, 
from glen to glen, each glittering with cascades, 
you will rejoice that New York City has such a 
wealth of beauty close at hand. 

Half way up Big Injin is the little town of 
Oliverea, which the natives pronounce to rhyme 
with sea, and I don 't see why they should n 't. It 



BIG INJIN AND HEAP BIG SLIDE 213 

boasts an engaging little schoolhouse, very white, 
with a yard, then already very green, on which 
three little boys were valiantly endeavoring to use 
a baseball bat — the three being the entire boy pop- 
ulation of the town, I suppose. Brute knocked 
out a few to them while I was making inquiries as 
to the accommodations farther along. We were 
ingenuously assured, with no reference to the 
truth, that we could easily find lodging farther up 
the road, or at least the man at the Club would 
take us in. The Club, it seemed, was half way up 
Slide. This, promising an early start on the mor- 
row, cheered our legs, which were beginning to 
groan with the addition of every rod. 

Big Injin Valley widens out at the top into an up- 
land bowl. The Esopus falls away and is heard no 
more. In summer the view over the rolling hill- 
sides presents great distances of melting contours. 
When we saw it we were chiefly concerned with 
the declining sun. The swelling tide of spring 
had not yet inundated the encompassing circlet of 
fields that heads the cultivable vale. We had 
again reached the snow-level. From time to time 
we had seen the gray sides of Panther heaving 
forests against the sky, but we had seen no Slide. 
We knew he must be ahead of us, for the map said 
so and the natives confirmed the map. But, 
though we had actually been ascending him for 
two hours, we had had no glimpse. Slide sidles 



214 THE CATSKILLS 

behind other peaks. For years he had lived un- 
suspected by his tenants. With a final good-by 
to open fields, the Esopus, Big Injin Valley, and 
daylight, we entered the woods, tired, wet, hun- 
gry, and apprehensive. 

The Winnisook Club is an exclusive affair head- 
quartered on a little lake part way up Slide, sur- 
rounded by forests, miles from food and bed. Its 
cottages are cared for by an affable man and his 
wife, who, by rule, are not supposed to take in 
tramps, no matter how hungry. Luckily, we did 
not know this. Why the inhabitant of Oliverea 
did not tell us the truth of the matter I cannot 
fathom, and I shall not repeat Brute's reason. 

The entrance to the Club forest is impressive. 
The trees are tall, the road winding. On that 
night, in addition to the awe of darkening wood, 
we felt a vague misgiving as of coming misad- 
venture. If the caretaker should not be in, if he 
should not have enough food, if he should decline 
to house us — these questionings came to our lips 
as the snow deepened and the steepness of the 
hill increased. **We can go ow/' said my legs 
to me, **but not an inch back." 

How alternatives make cowards of us all! As 
long as there was a question of turning back and 
finding assured provender in distant Oliverea, 
or of plugging on and trusting to fortune, what 
a sickening seesaw our wills experienced! But 



BIG INJIN AND HEAP BIG SLIDE 217 

wnen we had gone so far that there was no more 
question of retreat, how gay we became! There 
is sorcery in such a situation. Brute is the sort 
of chap to come completely under the spell. For- 
tune has but to waver, and he is after her like a 
terrier after a rat. Let a scrape get really ab- 
surd, and he is elated with a species of raging 
joy. His pulse beats to the impossible. And we 
all love him for it. That was why it was such 
fun to travel with him. In the last analysis, it is 
a safe tendency, too; for those who can be di- 
vinely foolish can also be supremely sensible. 

Despite Brute's occasional jests, I pulled my- 
self up that slope with a hang-dog sinking of the 
nerve. It was so steep for tired muscles, so dark 
when there might be no light to greet us. The 
Club must keep stout horses. Presently we came 
upon a man's tracks. He had been chopping. I 
can remember the appearance of his handiwork 
yet — ash in fire-wood pieces, white as peppermint 
sticks. It made me savagely hungry. 

At the last gasp of twilight and of my lament- 
ing bellows, we reached the dammed pond on 
which the Club cottages look out. We tried sev- 
eral before we found the one inhabited by the care- 
taker. A very thin wisp of smoke came from the 
chimney. This was cheering. We knocked. No 
answer. Knocked again. No answer. This was 
not cheering. In that moment of waiting I real- 



218 THE CATSKILLS 

ized how very tired I was. After tlie third knock 
we opened the door and walked in. 

The kitchens of mountaineers are usually one 
extreme or another. They are filthy or very clean, 
a welter of incapacity or a brightness to the soul, 
a sty or a religion. This one was a religion. The 
black iron altar from which the incense arose had 
not been left overlong, for the wood coals were 
still hot. In one corner stood a table on which 
the gospel of good eating was thrice-daily 
preached. It was still set with the lesser tenets : 
a jug of maple syrup, a bottle of pickles, sugar. 
The pantry door was open, and no hart panted 
after the water-brooks more fervently than did 
our palates for the sustenance within. Yet in 
this inimitable paradise of plenty there was no 
inhabitant visible. The situation paralleled that 
of the original Garden in the w^eek preceding 
Adam. 

It was a delicate situation. Out West it is still 
entirely permissible to apply the golden rule. In 
the East the silver one has been adopted instead. 

"Must we starve in sight of plenty?" I sighed. 

''We '11 explain that we are n't ordinary house- 
breakers." 

"Suppose they shoot us first and then inquire?" 

"Why can't we pay in advance?" 

*^ Before being shot, you mean?" 

"I '11 stay with you," said Brute, with a sud- 



BIG INJIN AND HEAP BIG SLIDE 219 

den air of finality, putting some wood into the 
stove at the same time. 

**You certainly won't go with me," I replied, 
trying to assume the same tone. 

''Where do you suppose they keep the bacon?" 
Thus we were committed. 

While supper was advancing we thought of 
many plans. Both to sit up and welcome the re- 
turning host. One to sit up, the other to sleep, 
turn about. Both to go to bed, leaving a note. 
We had a simple but substantial meal, and we 
made out a scrupulous bill to ourselves, paying it 
to the table in dimes and quarters, a pile of them 
by the lamp. The clock-hands went round, but 
nobody appeared. The heat of the room, the 
soothing meal, the pleasant reaction from indeci- 
sion to commitment, from fatigue to sleepiness, 
all made staying up a further impossibility. 

'*I '11 give this family ten minutes to come in 
and catch me awake. After that they can finish 
me off with a club and I '11 not say a word. ' ' 

I yawned an unmannerly, exuberant yawn. 

*'It 's unreasonable," I muttered, "if they 're 
so finicky as to object to two, nice, pleasant, culti- 
vated, amiable, and fatigued young — " 

* * Oh, cut it and give me a pencil. ' ' 

I sleepily pitched Brute one, and he took a piece 
of paper, — the side of a breakfast-food box it was, 
— and printed: 



220 THE CATSKILLS 

KINDLY DO NOT WAKEN 
WE CAN PAY 

The idea was a good one. I took the other side 
of the box and wrote : 

PLEASE BE GENTLE. WE ARE 
HARMLESS TOURISTS 

Then, with the ends of the box, we made two 
placards and placed them beside the little piles 
of coin : food — lodging. 

That done and our minds composed to sleep, 
there remained only the details of the exact loca- 
tion. We delicately reconnoitered the situation 
as far as it threw light on beds. Upstairs there 
were three rooms with a double bed each, and 
downstairs a crib, a couch, a window-seat, and an 
enormous arm-chair. It was a nice diplomacy 
that was required. How far could we trespass 
on the sanctity of the home and yet get a night's 
rest? The crib was out of the question, and I 
declined the arm-chair. We thought it wise to 
eliminate the upstairs beds. This left us the 
couch, the window-seat, and the floor. 

We had just recovered from the last throes of 
debate and were partially prepared for window- 
seat and couch, when the kitchen door swung open, 
and in stepped a flannel-shirted gentleman, closely 
followed by a lady and two younger gentilities. 



BIG INJIN AND HEAP BIG SLIDE 221 

I say gentleman and lady descriptively, instead of 
man and woman, which they undoubtedly were, 
because of the not inconsiderable poise with which 
they met the situation. My visualization of a 
gentleman is very nearly that of a man walking 
into his own house at the dead of night to find it 
commandeered by two strangers, and yet whose 
equanimity is still equal to the shock. 

There was a moment of polite expectancy, the 
moment in a Western story when the hero's eye" 
flashes fire just before his gun does. The two 
boys stared from behind their mother. Then Mr. 
Short said: 

** Making yourselves to home, boys?" 

So, after all, there was no ranting to heaven, 
nothing theatrical except the entrance. We soon 
were explained. They laughed at our signs, 
and Mrs. Short brought out some gingerbread 
which we had overlooked, and which made a de- 
lectable addendum to our meal (as paid for). The 
boys, who were at the hero stage, were all eyes on 
Brute, who sat winking like a sleepy young giant, 
with his shirt open at the throat, his sleeves still 
rolled up — he had washed the dishes — showing 
wondrous muscle, or so they thought. And as he 
said droll things they stared. 

There is nothing so beautiful as a boy's admi- 
ration for strength. I doubt whether Brute real- 
ized his enshrinement. He talked against sleep 



THE CATSKILLS 

because he felt that he owed them more than 
money. But it makes a scene I shall be long for- 
getting: the hospitable kitchen, the wide-eyed 
youngsters, and the guide listening as Brute told 
them about our night on Huntersfield. His feet 
were high on the wood-box; the good nature of 
him shone through his weariness. His dark, 
tously hair and dark eyes made the necessary 
shadow to the light of his smile. 

At length — at great length, it seemed to me — 
we were shown to real sheets, and we slept — for 
a moment. The sun — which, like the reputed 
American zeal, cannot be kept down — rising, we 
did too, confused at the shortness of the night, 
but obedient to Mr. Short's summons. There is 
much virtue in cold water. A little cold water put 
the sun in its place. We descended as fresh as 
if there had been no yesterdays. Mrs. Short's 
breakfast was ambitious, trying to be dinner. 
We did justice to its aspirations. As the boys 
saw us off, they said : 

* * Reckon you fellows '11 be the first up Slide this 
season. Good luck." 

People like that bring home the kindred of the 
world. In contrast to the apprehension with 
which we had approached the lonely little Club, 
we were going refreshed in body and reinforced 
in spirit. The earth, too, had been recreated by 
the night. Frost sparkled on everything. The 



BIG INJIN AND HEAP BIG SLIDE 223 

air bit playfully. The universe shone as if it 
had just been turned out from a fresh lot of 
nebulae. The snow was hard, and easy to walk 
on. 

The route from the Club led along the road for 
a short way, then turned to the right and took to 
a trail. As the boys had warned us, there were 
no footprints, but the blazes were readable. The 
map was sufficient commentary. To our left the 
woods sloped uniformly up ; on the right they fell 
into a ravine. Here and there the forest cover 
parted for a moment to let the eye rove over dis- 
tances that were ever bluer and farther. It took 
about two hours to reach the top. 

Unfortunately for the view in summer, Slide 
has no tower. There used to be one, but it has 
rotted. We felt our way to the highest point by 
following the old telephone wire that used to run 
to the tower. Even without that, it would not be 
very difficult to follow the spine of the horseback 
crest to the actual summit. For us it was very 
easy, as a digression to either side meant plung- 
ing into snow armpit deep. Rabbit tracks, deer 
tracks, even mouse and bird tracks, were common 
on the level top between the stunted conifers where 
the snow could not drift. Spring, which had been 
busy in Philadelphia for a full month, which had 
begun to run her green fingers through the woods 
of the valley below us, had never cast a look in 



224 THE CATSKILLS 

Slide's direction. Except for the crust on the 
snow, which betokened some thaw, it might have 
been December on the ground. But not so in the 
air. The dazzle of a spring sun, a certain soft- 
ness that would win yet from the hard heart of 
winter what was wanted, were all about. We 
reached the pile of stones supposed to be the apex 
of the ungainly mountain, and drew a deep breath. 
It had been without much effort, and, in the world 
of morals, should be without much reward. But 
there is some comfort for sinners in knowing that 
Nature gets along without morality. I have un- 
dergone every torture under heaven in trying to 
reach some peak, and had little for my pains. 
Again, I have strolled out upon some ledge and 
had the world at my feet. There is no morality 
in Nature. But there is so much intelligence re- 
quired to keep up with her that it is easier to 
follow the trails that we call morals than to blaze 
new ways to the selfsame peaks. Quite without 
questioning as to whether we had earned the view, 
we sat down on a near-by projection and began 
to absorb it. 

It was still early morning. There was no stir 
of air. The influences of Nature were exactly 
counter-poised. Even the immense billows of 
mountains seemed just forever halted. Snow glit- 
ter answered back to sun, east to west, range in 
response to valley. It was impossible to realize 



BIG INJIN AND HEAP BIG SLIDE 225 

that this whole accurately balanced contrivance 
was revolving at frenzied speed — hard to realize 
even that there were breezes in the valley and 
tides in the sea. Peace and calm beyond the 
senses to feel closed about us. 

Views from the tops of mountains are among 
the most unsatisfying things that human beings 
toil to attain, and the higher the more unsatis- 
fying. Lesser mountains immediately become 
despicable. The reach of sky, ordinarily big 
enough, one would think, expands to inconceivable 
and useless proportions. Instead of looking at 
the colored mosses at one's feet, which could be 
understood, one gazes into a vague wash of senti- 
ment that leaves no effect on the memory. The 
wind usually precludes comfort. The home-going 
must soon be considered. As a waste of foot 
pounds of energy, mountaineering is nearly one 
hundred per cent, thorough. But as a bath to 
the spirit it is an efficient promoter of soul-health. 

The easiest view from Slide is obtained from 
that projection on the east. We sat for a long 
while, watching the long ribbon of the Ashokan 
and the faint mists of morning lying in the troughs 
of the mountain-rollers. To the northeast rose 
terrace after terrace of the northern Catskills, 
tinged with a faint, coppery blue. Then we 
changed over to the west, and looked down into 
wooded valleys where the morning was still young. 



226 THE CATSKILLS 

On the north side we looked over into the extraor- 
dinary gulf from which the mountain drew its 
name, part of the brow having yielded to the call 
of gravity and slipped to the base. 

Early in the morning the three hundred miles 
of horizon visible from Slide paint a color picture 
to which one's sensibilities, keyed by the height, 
respond with pleasure. There are greens and 
blues, browns and oranges, violets and purples, 
yellow whites and innumerable gradations of un- 
namable tints. Sunset is a wide shimmer of color 
deepening from the east to west. Moonlight 
makes the valleys luminous with grays and velvet 
blacks. At noon the vales are in a stupor of 
light; at midnight they are lost in a dream of 
darkness over-watched by such a multitude of 
stars that there come new impressions of the 
Divine Authority. Slide is hard to reach, hard to 
see from, is remote and lonely; but in spring or 
summer, in snow-time or at the tide of flaming 
leaf, the view it gives over the ocean of visible 
atmosphere will never fail to repay. Enchant- 
ment ebbs and flows, if you but take the time to 
be enchanted. 

If Brute and I had learned no other lesson from 
all our peaks, it was to surrender ourselves to 
the mountain in hand, to forget plans and times, 
and to let ourselves get thoroughly bewitched. 
If you carry up clothes enough to keep warm, the 



BIG INJIN AND HEAP BIG SLIDE 227 

mountain will do the rest. As the morning 
lengthened I fell to watching the birds, of which 
there seemed an unusual number. A downy wood- 
pecker was rejoicing in virgin territory, and some 
chickadees were apparently doing him the hon- 
ors of the summit. So small, so hospitable, so 
cheerful! Brute answered their matter-of-fact 
burr, and attracted a kinglet from the void. A 
snow-bird seemed positively glad to see us, whisk- 
ing about the stone-piles, but never getting far 
away. 

But Brute did not talk. Talking, with him, was 
by no means a way of passing time, but rather a 
method of communicating something that he 
wanted to say. The advantages of this probably 
overbalance the disadvantages, but sometimes I 
would have liked just a little babbling for the sake 
of a voice. After he had his fill of the surround- 
ing emptiness, he began to hunt up the names of 
the ranges on the map, and to put them in my 
note-book. I am giving them as I find them, read- 
ing from north to northeast and on around. If 
you can't get up Slide this may help to a slight 
visualization of the panorama : 

Due north, a deep ravine, the rising shoulder 
of Panther, with Vly far off. 

Panther Peak, a magnificent expanse of hard- 
wood forest with a few conifers. 



228 THE CATSKILLS 

Shandaken Notch, steep walls and a hint of the 
farther valley. 

Huntersfield (of nocturnal memory). 

North Dome, actually domelike, falling into 
Broadstreet Hollow, with Mt. Richmond showing 
beyond. 

Mt. Sheridan close, with Big Westkill's bulk 
high behind it. 

Windham High Peak thirty miles away, with 
Hunter Mountain nearer, and Black Dome and 
Blackhead visible through Woodland Valley on 
the northeast. 

Stony Clove, quickly rising to Plateau Moun- 
tain. Mt. Tremper nearer, and the Mink. 

Kaaterskill High Peak in back of Mt. Pleasant. 

Indian Head back of Mt. Tobias, a funny little 
melted ice-cream cone. 

The sky-line here is easily the figure of a man 
lying down. It is known as the Old Man of the 
Mountains — a magnificent welter of rounded lines. 

Then comes the Overlook Mountain in the dis- 
tance, the Wittenberg dark in the foreground, with 
a cleft where Woodstock lies. 

Mt. Cornell. 

Far to the east they say that you can see Mt. 
Everett in Massachusetts. 

Mt. Ticetonyk next, and Kingston lying low, 
with Hussey's Hill and the great Eeservoir ap- 
pearing over Balsam Top. 



BIG INJIN AND HEAP BIG SLIDE 229 

Southeast lies High Point and Lake Mohonk, 
Break Neck, and far away Storm King of the 
Highlands. 

Due south the long Shawangunk Range, with 
Cross Mountain and the slopes nearby where rise 
the waters of the Neversink. 

Lone Mountain and the broad Table, with Peek- 
amose beyond. 

The rest of the horizon was hard to see because 
of trees. Double-Top was easily distinguishable 
to the west, with Graham next, and Hemlock in 
the foreground. 

Big Injin and Eagle Mountain sitting, appro- 
priately, on a nest of peaks of which the next to 
the last is Big Balsam. 

Belle Ayre, with its tower, Big Injin Valley, and 
Lost Clove leading to Belle Ayre. 

In the distance we could see Mt. Utsayantha 
watching over Stamford, then Bloomberg and 
Halcott, which spins the circle back to Panther 
and the great ravine. 

It is a great sensation to live long at such an 
altitude, to eat one's lunch where eagles are out 
for theirs, between bites to devour the Berkshires 
with one's eyes, and to drink of the Hudson be- 
tween cups of coffee. Finally Brute broke his 
reverie, motioning to the disappearing Storm 
King: 



230 THE CATSKILLS 

**It 's not much use to boast of your silly little 
distances like that, when anybody can see moun- 
tains a hundred times as far. ' ' 

"Are you wandering?" I asked. 

He pointed up to where a lemon-colored moon 
hung like a cake-plate. 

*' There 's mountains on that, you told me once," 
he gurgled, ''and snow on Mars, and spots on the 
sun, and here you are cackling about seeing into 
seven States at once. When do you expect to 
grow up?" 

My next move was not a reassuring answer to 
the query. 

There are several ways of leaving Slide. In 
summer a blazed trail over the Wittenberg gives 
a better view of the Ashokan and takes you down 
into Woodland Valley. Then you can venture 
into the Peekamose region, or you can follow our 
up-trail back to the road and go on down the 
Neversink through Branch, surely one of the love- 
liest roads in the world. But we looked over the 
northern edge, and a twin-idea came to us simul- 
taneously. Although bluebirds had long since 
come to the lowlands, the snow down that decliv- 
ity was deep and smooth and fairly hard. It oc- 
curred to us that, instead of laboring up Witten- 
berg, it would be far more fun to slide down Slide. 
The slope of the horse's neck was just right for 
such a performance, and we could connect with the 



BIG INJIN AND HEAP BIG SLIDE 231 

little brook that flows into Woodland Creek and 
so keep our bearings. Accordingly, leaving the 
crumbs for the chickadees and taking a last lung- 
ful of the view, we went over the top. 

To enjoy the next twenty minutes with us, please 
imagine a mountain slope of about forty-five de- 
grees and of astonishing smoothness. The snow 
blanket was not stone-hard, but packed just 
enough to sustain weight. On the slope grew 
small trees, the underbrush being snow-covered to 
a great extent. Kindly picture Brute and me 
starting down this wooded, crusted slope very 
gingerly at first, crouching on toes, soon allowing 
ourselves to attain greater speed, which was easily 
regulated by braking with our heels or by swing- 
ing around a smooth birch and beginning over 
again. The technique of this sport was speedily 
acquired. A slight bend forward would increase 
the speed at once. If there was a bush in the 
road, you could tack, or shut your eyes and go 
through. There was but one danger — to catch 
one's leg beneath a limb fast in the snow at both 
ends. At our rate of falling, a leg could easily 
have been snapped without our noticing it, as it 
were. 

But, as in running down a mountain, one does 
not count on being injured. The pace gets into 
the blood. We were able to keep parallel for some 
while; but Brute, the heavier, soon fell faster, in 



232 THE CATSKILLS 

the path of the snowballs, which ricocheted ahead 
of us, heralding our coming. It was a grand 
game, this slide-and-stop method of falling down 
a mountain. We soon knew how fast we could 
go, and it was no inconspicuous speed. The hol- 
low into which we were avalanching soon became 
obviously a stream-bed. Soon we heard the 
stream itself directly beneath us. Yet, since the 
crust held, we saw no reason why we should stop. 
My haunches grew wearier and wearier, but the 
spirit said, **0n." We must have slid a mile. 
Certainly my gloves will never slide again. 

In very good time we stopped. Five yards 
more and we should have made a waterfall of 
ourselves; for the brook, coming out of conceal- 
ment, fell into a chasm, leaving us to pay for our 
fun by winding down its icy bed. How long we 
were doomed to curve as it curved, to make figure 
eights for fear of losing it, I cannot say. But 
this I will assert : if there is anything that does n't 
know its mind, it is a stream of water. 

I should never counsel anybody to ascend Slide 
from that side. Yet if anybody does he will see 
beautiful woods and crystal streams. We soon 
found the mountain-side supporting larger trees. 
The brook grew by running, and finally, where it 
found a mate in another brook, we slackened our 
pace to account for stock. Our packs were on our 
backs. Our bones were in their joints. God was 



BIG INJIN AND HEAP BIG SLIDE 233 

in His heaven, and so were we. What more could 
be desired? 

The laughing beauty of the halting-place went 
straight to our hearts. The two streams, re- 
leased from their songless dream beneath ice, 
joined hands and dropped down the ravine to- 
gether in an exhilaration of white light. Ice glit- 
tered from the ledges, snow shone back into the 
wood, the wood was itself white with the cream 
and ivory of birch, and the sun shone levelly 
through the trees. We sat on the roots of a great 
hemlock and basked in the perfection of life. 

For a moment the warmth of the slide was in 
our blood ; the chill of the frosted grottos had not 
yet begun to penetrate. For a silver moment we 
rested, dazzled, almost breathless from the very 
splendor of our repose. Then we moved on. 

My memory has often gone back to that vision 
of untenanted fairyland, with its dim actual moun- 
tain bulking through the trees. I would like to 
lead people up that stream to that very spot, if 
there would be any chance of their seeing what 
Brute and I beheld. But it would never be the 
same. Nature is not only lavish beyond compu- 
tation in her variety of gifts : she must even vary 
the variety until one 's head spins in the bewilder- 
ment of riches. Mostly we do not heed, cannot 
heed, being so busy with stancher things than 
beauty. But when we need refreshment it will 



THE CATSKILLS 

always be there, this eternal fountain of beauty 
flowing in countless places, most of them half 
hidden. 

There was one more surprise reserved for us 
that day. We had bounded down that brook un- 
til we were weary, and the sun as well. We had 
crossed the trail and met Dougherty's Brook, as 
the good map said we would; but habitations 
seemed a world away. Suddenly a silent bird 
flew a few yards ahead of me, and stopped to 
stare. It was a sleek and ruddy robin, whom we 
blessed, for we knew that worms must be in sight. 
And worms meant food and lodging — indirectly, 
of course. Occasionally one comes upon a robin 
in the deep wood — usually a second son off seek- 
ing his fortune, or perhaps camping out. Mostly, 
however, a robin is the precursor of the cow-bell, 
a forerunner of friends at hand. Nor was our 
robin to betray our trust. Within three minutes 
we were talking to the children of the pioneer 
who lived farthest up Woodland Valley. Once 
more we were in spring. The snow was but a thin 
line along rock ledges, and once more we dared 
think how hungry we were. 

We ordered supper by cubic measure, and in the 
faint glow of early evening continued our walk 
down the valley. The cake-plate moon had long 
since been put away, but there was a surprising 
store of light. No night in the open is dark un- 



BIG INJIN AND HEAP BIG SLIDE 235 

less it is clouded. Type cannot be read by star- 
light, but a watch-face can be made out on any 
ordinary night. Details of scenery are lost, but 
the dark of ranges, the light of rivers, show against 
the general blank. Starlight on a lake or a wide 
road is light enough to travel by. But at night 
the world is very large. 

Woodland Valley was once and better named 
Snyder's Hollow. Some lily-livered namester 
with more sentimentality than sense did ill to de- 
prive the late Snyder of his due. If he first set- 
tled in it, he was a discerning man and deserves 
the credit. If an impersonal name had to be 
found for the smiling curves and beckoning aisles 
of the valley, the first ass that brayed might have 
better taken Ilee Haw Hollow to christen it with 
than the school-girlish and indistinguishable title 
of Woodland, where every other valley is wood- 
land too. 

This valley is a wander-way of sheer delight. 
You can loaf along it in the sunshine and watch 
the trout, or you can visit the little colony and 
talk with its founder, or explore into its stream- 
enlivened recesses. At its head the Wittenberg 
is its dark guardian, and Cross and Pleasant stand. 
From the last a ridge runs out a protecting arm 
along the entire valley, while on its western side 
great Panther sends out buttress after buttress 
to shelter it from storms. Into it flows the Pan- 



236 THE CATSKILLS 

ther Kill, another cherubic, laughing brook, wilful 
as an Indian child. The vistas up these valley 
arms are altogether lovely. I have yet to find a 
fellow tramp who has not left part of his heart 
up Woodland Valley. 

We were again upon the Esopus, to which we 
had said dubious au revoir the night before. By 
arrangement rather than by desire, we stopped 
at the Phoenicia post-office. The summons was 
there, three days old. Brute's sister had recov- 
ered from the measles, and his presence was re- 
quested. It was a dreadful blow, coming on top 
of so much pleasure. His feet were wet, his 
clothes were muddy, his hat was torn, his face 
was scratched, and I am not sure that his under- 
sitting was not the sufferer from too much Slide ; 
but the boy proper was in the rich and perfect 
bloom of health. He did not speak for a little, nor 
did I feel like conversation. The wealth of the 
last three weeks, on the interest from which I 
could support many a happy memory, had been 
so silently accumulating that I had not realized 
how much of it I was in debt to Vreeland for. . . . 

He took the early morning train. 

** Remember the ninth of June," I called to him. 

"Call me a hop-toad if I 'm not there," he 
shouted back. 

I strolled back to the empty town. There was a 
pleasant store, and the owner was intelligent on 



BIG INJIN AND HEAP BIG SLIDE 237 

flies and full of tales about the recent trout-kill- 
ings in the Esopus. I might have felt more dis- 
consolate had not every once in a while the recol- 
lection of a certain agreement flashed across my 
mind with a joyous brain-wink: ''Noon at the 
top-most rock of Shokan High Point on the ninth 
of June, shine or rain." 



CHAPTER XVI 

SPRING AND MR. BURROUGHS 

FAME lags behind the heels of greatness, be- 
cause fame depends upon the insight of the 
masses, and the masses are mainly concerned with 
getting bread and butter. But John Burroughs 
has lived in his leisurely way long enough for 
fame to catch up, or at least part way up. He 
is famous now for what he accomplished a decade 
ago. A decade hence he will be still more fa- 
mous for what he is doing now. There is no catch- 
ing up with Oom John. He possesses a progress- 
ing intelligence. His eighty years haven't hurt 
his hearing, his eyesight, or his brain. Bur- 
roughs grows. The people who would dismiss him 
as a bird-fiend should read his book on Whitman. 
Those who believe that his poems are only verse 
might well study his contributions to philosophy. 
And those who would experience the inner charm 
of the Catskill country must know their Bur- 
roughs weU. God made the Catskills ; Irving put 
them on the map; but it is John Burroughs who 
has brought them home to us. 

I first met him in the volume, ''Locusts and 

238 



SPRING AND MR. BURROUGHS 239 

Wild Honey. ' ' I very well remember that board- 
ing-school episode. We surreptitiously stole into 
forbidden fields, and at a forbidden hour, to prac- 
tise the sweet magic that the idyl preached. We 
found no honey, but I gained a friend. 

Then came college days, and answers to my 
letters to him, and finally an invitation. I was to 
visit Slabsides. And when he walked me up the 
hill, and talked, not as some authors with his wits 
in winter quarters, but with the full strength and 
aroma of "A Bed of Boughs" or *'Pepacton," 
how unreasonably natural it all seemed! The 
Burroughs that had existed for me on the living 
page was identical with the Burroughs before me 
in coat and beard. There was no change in him. 
I only was bigger. For, when one walks with 
Burroughs, one roots in the soil and flowers in the 
sky. My lungs had taken in a cosmic puff. It 
took me weeks to forget the feeling. 

So, when Dr. Clara Barrus telephoned on a 
spring morning that he would meet me in the au- 
tomobile at Kingston, I was glad, of course, but 
a little sorry, too. I supposed there would be a 
chauffeur, and that we 'd do sixty or seventy miles 
along smooth roads, and talk about the war. 

But the Young Fellow himself was at the wheel. 
That characterization is not my impertinence, but 
my impression. His white beard shone in the 
sun, but he reached over to shake hands with me 



240 THE CATSKILLS 

as energetically as the youth I had just seen off 
for France. There was a May-Day twinkle in 
his eye; his weather-tried cheeks showed firm. 
When he spoke, there was an Indian summer 
quality in his voice, a softness and strength, that 
made me glad. Dr. Barrus chose to guard the 
lunch baskets in the rear. It was to be an out- 
and-out Burroughs day. 

We were to circle the lake of Ashokan. Spring 
shone through the opalescent softness of the morn- 
ing. A haze brooded in the distant valleys, yet 
did not obscure the sun nor more than thinly veil 
the farther mountains. Our first view of the lake 
spread before us strange sheets of ice-filled wa- 
ter, willow-green, and ever before us rose the in- 
viting mountains topped by Slide, looking, as our 
poet-driver said, "like the long back and shoul- 
ders of a grazing horse." 

I told him how Brute and I had slid down the 
neck of that horse, and he talked about a hunt 
through the baffling mountains far beyond, when 
his quarry was an elusive lake; and all the while 
we sped along a perfect road. The air was fresh 
in our faces, and to me there was enjoyment in- 
tangible as a sailor's relish of salt spray in sitting 
there beside the master fieldsman. That day I 
took no notes. 

I was indeed a lucky man, but luckier only by 
a degree than any who may read his books. For 



SPRING AND MR. BURROUGHS 241 

that is the last felicity of a writer, the ability to 
convey the whole of his personality in his written 
word. And that John Burroughs has. He sees, 
he penetrates, he makes his own, then makes his 
ours. 

Sometimes we pass by the loveliest sights of 
this world simply because there has been nobody 
at our side to point them out. For it is hard to 
see that which has not been foreseen. We must 
first cherish what we would embrace. And most 
of us are still so blind that, though the ground lies 
open to our eyes, yet there are few to read. Study 
Burroughs ' ' ' The Divine Soil ' ' and see what news 
lies in the dust. To the expert there are more 
secrets still than a Cassandra could surmise. 

The ability to show is Burroughs' first right to 
popularity: he has shared the long road with any 
man who cares to be his comrade. Give him a 
true lover of berrying, of fishing, of trailing, of 
taking the seasons as they come, and because his 
sight is keen, his fancy warm, he will show that 
man the unguessed soul of many a familiar thing. 
And because the unguessed is so comforting the 
true lover of out-doors will bless him all his days. 
He does bless him, from Maine to California and 
back to Florida. Nor is his popularity bounded 
by the breadth of our land. It is as if he had made 
every migrant bird an ally for the spread of his 
fame. His bees are heard around the world. 



^42 THE CATSKILLS 

But Burroughs is not only popular : lie is great, 
if greatness is, as I believe, triumphant person- 
ality. Some day you may drive up the long hill 
out of Roxbury and see the old homestead where 
the boy Burroughs grew up. A small weather- 
beaten house, a barn, an orchard wizened by the 
winds, some stony fields, a vast expanse of sky — 
that is the environment from which he turned to 
trade thought for thought with Emerson and Whit- 
man, with Muir and Roosevelt, with Harriman, 
Edison, and the other great men of our time. Can 
you explain it? The genius in him not only bade 
him climb from the estate of barefoot boy to the 
confusing brightness of private car and execu- 
tive mansion, but it kept his soul barefoot all the 
while. That is a triumph, too, for the American 
idea of true liberty — the liberty to find one's 
equals. But the greatest triumph lies with the 
man. He turned from his raspberry bushes and 
his grapes, plunged into the strongest currents of 
personality his contemporaries could afford, and 
yet emerged himself, ready to return to his sim- 
ple-hearted farmerhood. Loyal to himself, to his 
conception of the universe, he refused to lose his 
identity for any pottage. The result is a man 
whose friends are legion, a writer whose work 
still flows with the original fountain freshness, a 
philosopher whose devotion to his vision of the 
truth has had its certain effect upon our nation. 



SPRING AND MR. BURROUGHS 243 

While I was thinking these things, and while 
Mr. Burroughs was pointing out some beauties 
of Nature, the car nearly went over the bank. 
I think the Doctor sighed. ' ' So, so, Doctor, ' ' said 
the chauffeur; "you will not die before your 
time." I resolved to perish inaudibly if it must 
be. Just then we drew up before a spectacle so 
beautiful, so ethereal, that all who see it are 
strangely moved, although it is but a group of 
fountains. 

It is in this lonely basin, miles from any city, 
that the water which has been collecting from the 
shining mountains goes through a certain rite of 
purification before it flows on to fulfil its mission. 
From a hundred hidden sources, columns of water 
rise into the air, mingle in flashings of light, and 
fall again. Not only does the sun light them, but 
they seem animated with an innate splendor. 
Constant as faith these waters rise, changeful as 
a dream they waver and fall. We sat entranced 
as if we w^ere witnessing some exquisite and se- 
cret rite of Eastern festival. From sunrise till 
sunset, and perchance beneath the changing moon, 
the perpetual play of these white waters goes on, 
a prayer for purity. 

I don't know which was the more forceful as- 
pect of this surprise, the sheer beauty of it or the 
meaning of the thing. For this scene, contrived 
for nobody's spectacle, nor yet for mere utility, 



244 THE CATSKILLS 

seemed to typify the vision of the coming time 
when use and beauty should at last be married for 
the common weal. Already the Empire State has 
verified the dream of such a marriage in this Cats- 
kill Park. Here we were motoring on a marvel- 
ous highway beside a magic lake made for a city's 
use, viewing a water-garden of such beauty as 
Scheherazade had never dreamed, and making to- 
ward a mountain park of sacred forest and pro- 
tected stream created to be a people's pleasure- 
land. Little of all this could John Burroughs 
have foreseen as he jolted over these lonely moun- 
tains sixty years ago, hunting for a job. 

As we approached Tongore he told me a little 
of the past. It was in 1837 that he was born at 
Roxbury on the western slopes of the Catskills. 
When he was seventeen he quit the farm, bundled 
his sensibilities together, and made off to seek, not 
his fortune, but a position as school-teacher. It 
may soften the lot of present-day school-teachers 
to be told that his salary was "eleven dollars a 
month and board around." 

We visited the village, a tawdry group of dwell- 
ings with a populous burying-ground, but scant 
ten living families, I should judge. The sun fell 
softly on the graves where so many that he knew 
and the one that he loved lie. By reason of 
strength, he had reached his fourscore, but almost 
alone. How inscrutable is this impulse to live 



SPRING AND MR. BURROUGHS 245 

on! If living were a whim to be laid aside at 
will, I wonder how many would see thirty. In 
days as sweet as the one we were enjoying, yet 
years before the guns of Sumter, he had gone 
sweethearting and honeymooning over these moun- 
tains. He leaned against one of the great boul- 
ders, thinking silently and long of things brought 
back by that same light upon the mountains and 
the breath of the same sweet returning spring. 
At last, caressing the rock, he said: 

*'Ah! That is granite. Granite will stand the 
racket. ' ' 

Our road, ever curving about the lake, now be- 
gan to invade the mountains. Valleys cut deep, 
and from them came cool breezes damp with the 
melting snowdrifts that still lay in the deeper 
gorges. 

*'We used to call those late drifts the heel of 
winter," said Mr. Burroughs. ''As soon as the 
heel is lifted the flowers invade the land." 

It is forty miles around the Reservoir, and there 
is a special beauty in each mile. Every cape 
rounded meant for us new vistas of green vales, 
new inlets of blue water ; and all the time, in addi- 
tion to the beauty of the landscape, I felt the stim- 
ulus of the presence beside me, the genius who 
came out of the air quite as much as out of the 
family. For, though you search the record and 
find the Burroughs branch of his ancestry ''retir- 



246 THE CATSKILLS 

ing, peace-loving, solitude-loving," and the Kelly 
branch full of 'revolutionary blood, longings, tem- 
porizing, mystical," yet there were other boys 
in the family of whom the world has never 
heard. 

At just the right moment Burroughs found 
Emerson, and at another Audubon. They fired 
his brain and his heart, and ever since that fire 
has never failed him, though his vicissitudes have 
been many. For a genius, like other people, has 
to feel his way. He taught school in half a dozen 
places, dreamed of wealth over a patent shoe- 
buckle, studied medicine, married, went to Wash- 
ington to be a clerk, wrote essays after the day's 
work, breakfasted with Walt Whitman on Sun- 
days, found the longing for the soil too severe to 
be withstood, moved to the Hudson, once more in 
sight of the Catskills, raised his ton of grapes and 
his pound of literature each year, and lived. 

We had curved round to the little town of Sho- 
kan, near the site of Olive, where he had found 
his wife, and all unknowing I was coming to the 
water-shed of my day. 

Such things happen and are over, often with- 
out our knowing it. I was realizing that the hours 
were precious, inimitable, that the experience 
could not be repeated ; but I was not prepared for 
the dramatic moment preparing. We had gone 
down by a by-road to the site of Dr. Hull 's house, 



SPRING AND MR. BURROUGHS 247 

where Burroughs had studied medicine, when, in 
the quandary of youth, poor, dissatisfied with 
teaching, trying to support a wife, depressed by 
the Rebellion, he was casting around for his place 
in the veiled scheme of things. One day he closed 
his book on anatomy and wrote a poem, simple, 
elemental, accessible. It was his confession of 
faith. There, on the very spot, we found our- 
selves at the exact anniversary of his first visit, 
sixty-four years ago. How beautifully the inspi- 
ration had taken words unto itself! So, as you 
read these words, conceive you this picture: an 
erect prophet with a prophet's beard standing in 
the noontide beauty of spring fields, thinking back 
to those days dark with their future unexplored. 
Hear his voice, sweet, low, unshaking, repeat this 
confession of faith — faith in the unalterable fact 
that character and destiny are one — composed at 
the darkest moment of his life: 

WAITING 

Serene I fold my hands and wait, 
Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea; 

I rave no more 'gainst time or fate, 
For lo ! my own shall come to me. 

I stay my haste, I make delays, 
For what avails this eager pace? 

I stand amid th' eternal ways. 

And what is mine shall know my face. 



M8 THE CATSKILLS 

Asleep, awake, by night or day, 
The friends I seek are seeking me. 

No wind can drive my bark astray, 
Nor change the tide of destiny. 

What matter if I stand alone ? 

I wait with joy the coming years ; 
My heart shall reap where it hath sown, 

And garner up its fruit of tears. 

The waters know their own, and draw 
The brook that springs in yonder heights ; 

So flows the good with equal law 
Unto the soul of pure delights. 

The stars come nightly to the sky, 
The tidal wave comes to the sea: 

Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high, 
Can keep my own away from me. 

There was suitable silence for a moment, and 
then a strange bird shot by a couple of yards 
above us. Its bullet-round head and sharp wings 
seemed the very emblems of savagery. Instantly 
our host became the Burroughs of the essays, the 
Burroughs whose major interest is in birds. 

''See the pigeon-hawk!" he exclaimed, as 
eagerly as anybody else would have said. *'Do 
look at Vesuvius ! ' ' Out under the genial sun and 
on the new grass, we sat down to lunch. 

As long as the mesh of memory wears, there will 
always be strength and inspiration for me in the 



' / 




FhotOiiraph by the author 

MAN-NoT-AFRAID-OF-CoMPANr 



SPRING AND MR. BURROUGHS 251 

retrospect of that nooning. It was an epic lunch, 
dimensional and qualitative. We discussed the 
nature of God and of deviled eggs. We sealed the 
fate of fake naturalists and many a round of cake 
at the same time. Olives, art, more coffee, the 
stream of consciousness, all lit by the caressing 
sun, occupied time and space for us. In the midst 
of a cheese sandwich, he said: "I have lived 
long, but I am convinced that the heart of Nature 
is sound at bottom. The divine consciousness 
cares little for the human frame. Nature is cruel. 
She does not exist solely for the sake of man. 
Man happens to be the bloom of her present en- 
deavor, perhaps the end of life on our cooling 
sphere. And humanity is itself the justification 
of this consciousness of being, this latest bloom of 
Nature. The fruit may come some other where 
and in some other form. ' ' 

That is, of course, but the intuitive thought of 
a man whose sensitiveness to the truth observable 
about him is marked. It is intuition, but I would 
hang more on the intuition of this man than on 
the logic of the ablest indoor debater. 

I am not writing a life of Burroughs. Dr. Clara 
Barrus's *'Our Friend John Burroughs" is a biog- 
raphy of charm and detail. I am writing of the 
spirit of the Catskill country; and, as I conceive 
him, John Burroughs is the living embodiment 
of his native uplands. While, unfortunately, the 



252 THE CATSKILLS 

theory of environment accounting for the individ- 
ual does not hold water, there are certain eminent 
persons who seem to sum up an environment, to 
express the soul of a landscape. Wordsworth be- 
comes by nature and association the genius of his 
Lake Country. Muir seems to have gathered up 
the grandeur and lonely distances of his West. 
Muir would have stifled in Massachusetts. Bur- 
roughs is the spiritualization of the view from 
Woodchuck Lodge, itself typical of the Catskill 
best. 

The Catskills are a well watered mountainland 
compounded of Cooper's tales and the Psalms of 
David, deep forests and green pastures, living 
heights and still waters. There are no jagged 
peaks, no lava flows, no vast sterilities of sand 
or ice. The holy of holies, however, has always 
been a quiet place. Let sublimity stun. The 
heart warms easier to serenely sloping ranges and 
the sweet-scented pastures of man's oldest pur- 
suit. And Burroughs is like that. He never 
wrestles with the angels; he accepts their invita- 
tion. 

That qualitiy of repose eliminates him from the 
topmost circle of great souls as we now rate them. 
Burroughs is happy, the master of his own inner 
harmony. I doubt whether the greatest have been 
happy, or even longed to be. They have chosen 
struggle, rivalry, the clash of conquest, up-striv- 



SPRING AND MR. BURROUGHS 253 

ings. Burroughs has not avoided the fight so 
much as that his nature has not known the neces- 
sity of it. But this attitude in which I paint him 
is very different from complaisance. Still active, 
he stands on the bluff of eternity, hand to brow, 
peering into the dim perspective of the spirit. 
His feet have never left fact. There is no page 
of his not lettered with truth. He makes his way 
among the dusty verities, but his outlook is free. 
He has busied himself with the things at his hand 
— the pebble, the feather, and the flower. But he 
has not stopped there. He has followed out the 
clue, and with his leisurely tirelessness has got 
pretty far along on the endless road into the ob- 
durate dark. There is only one thing more tena- 
cious than his will to search. It is his faith. 

Some one gave John Burroughs the Indian name 
meaning Man-Not- Afraid-of-Company. And he is 
wonderfully generous with himself. At West 
Park, where his vineyards are, he is visited. At 
Slabsides, the retreat he built himself, where he 
might write and eat the bread of privacy, he is 
besieged. Squadrons of school-teachers, clergy- 
men in multiple, students, capitalists, artists, 
climb the hill ; and he is at home to all. 

But high in the western Catskills, at the old 
home whence came the first impulse toward his 
calling, is his best-loved dwelling-place, Wood- 
chuck Lodge. There, in the old barn-study, he 



254 THE CATSKILLS 

has written his enchanting pastorals. There he 
will be buried when he is ready to pass on. The 
record of his life is a large, aromatic volume. Lit- 
erary values change, and some of his criticisms 
may lose their force. Philosophies change, and 
his views may fade in the growing light. But the 
loveliness that he has caught between his covers 
from the larger loveliness about him is a genuine 
contribution to the world's delight. And, first 
and last, he is a Catskills' child. His youth 
bounded those mountains on the west, his maturity 
on the east, and his finest essays deal with their 
structure and their soul. 



CHAPTER XVn 

INTERMEZZO 

**My garden is a pleasant place 
Of sun-glory and wind-grace. 
There is an ancient cherry-tree — " 

EVERY morning I read that while I was get- 
ting, not into flannel shirt and tramping 
togs, but into the cuffs and collars of outrageous 
fashion. For my week of fishing had long since 
fled. The dandelions had bloomed and blown, the 
commuters changed from derby to straw, and I 
had been sucked so completely under by the vor- 
tices of business that my one taste of outdoors 
was to read : 

' * There is an ancient cherry tree 
Where yellow warblers sing to me, 
And an old grape arbor where 
A robin builds her nest, and there — " 

My felt hat, with the trout-flies in its band, hung 
at hand. I had got out my copy of *'Pepacton" 
to be re-read. I had intended daily to write to 

255 



256 THE CATSKILLS 

those new friends who lived in the Mountains of 
the Sky, and I sighed sometimes when the sunset 
was very long in fading. I wanted to drop things 
and go, for — 

'*A heart may travel very far 
To come where its desires are." 

But, aside from occasional letters beginning 
**Dear friend Morris" and ending ''Your friend 
Brute," trout-flies, Pepacton, and even a certain 
"topmost rock of Shokan High Point on the ninth 
of June," were lost in the maze of madness termed 
* ' awfully busy. ' ' Only sometimes, when I paused 
after reading: 

< < My garden is a pleasant place 
Of moon-glory and leaf -grace — " 

did I realize the subconscious hold upon me the 
land had on which that garden looked. What a 
very pleasant place the garden was, beside the 
broad Hudson, back from the hilly street of quiet 
old Catskill and she who distilled its "moon-glory 
and leaf -grace" into such exquisite poetry lived 
there, Catskill-born. The Miss Louise Driscoll, 
who has brought the loveliness of the Catskill 
country to us in her art as authoritatively as Bur- 
roughs and Birge Harrison in theirs, is letting 



INTERMEZZO ^57 

me repeat here the poem that she wrote and read 
me near *Hhe ancient cherry tree." I thank her 
for it, and Mr. Wharton Stork, too, in whose 
''Contemporary Verse" it first appeared, for let- 
ting me reprint 

MY GARDEN IS A PLEASANT PLACE 

My garden is a pleasant place 
Of sun-glory and wind-grace. 
There is an ancient cherry-tree 
Where yellow warblers sing to me. 
And an old grape-arbor where 
A robin builds her nest, and there 
Above the lima beans and peas. 
She croons her little melodies. 
Her blue eggs hidden in the gre 
Fastness of that leafy screen. 

Here are striped zinnias that bees 
Fly far to visit, and sweet peas 
Like little butterflies, new-born ; 
And over by the tasseled corn 
Are sunflowers and hollyhocks 
And pink and yellow four-o-clocks. 

Here are humming-birds that come 
To seek the tall delphinium, 
Songless bird and scentless flower 
Communing in a golden hour. 



258 THE CATSKILLS 

There is no blue like the blue cup 
The tall delphinium holds up, 
Nor sky, nor distant hill, nor sea, 
Sapphire nor lapis lazuli. 

My lilac trees are old and tall, 
I cannot reach their bloom at all. 
They send their perfume over trees 
And streets and roofs to find the bees. 

I wish some power would touch my ear 
"With magic touch and make me hear 
What all the blossoms say, and so 
I might know what the winged things know. 
I 'd hear the sunflower's magic pipe, 

** Gold- finch, gold-finch, my seeds are ripeF' 
I 'd hear the pale wistaria sing, 

"Moon-moth, moon-moth, I 'm blossoming!'' 
I 'd hear the evening primrose say, 

"Oh, firefly! come, firefiy!" 
And I would learn the magic word 
The ruby-throated humming-bird 
Drops into cups of larkspur blue, 
And I would sing them all to you ! 

My garden is a pleasant place 
Of moon-glory and leaf -grace. 
Oh, friend, wherever you may be ! 
Will you not come to visit me ? 



INTERMEZZO 259 

Over fields and streams and hills, 
I '11 pipe like yellow daffodils, 
And every little wind that blows 
Shall take my secret as it goes. 
A heart may travel very far 
To come where its desires are. 
Oh ! may some power touch your ear, 
Be kind to me, and make you hear! 



CHAPTER XVIII 

A RENDEZVOUS WITH JUNE 

THERE are many sorts of beacons to pull us 
safely through the last hard mile. The 
horse has his manger, the philosopher his tertium 
quid, and even the life-prisoner can count upon his 
pardons. And so had I through the dark age of 
May my open sesame to the infinity of corridor 
through which the school-year drags its hind quar- 
ters. I had but to close my eyes and say **Noon 
at the topmost rock of Shokan on the ninth of 
June," and the little brawling blockheads would 
dissolve into thin air, and a close-up of a young 
fellow with wide-set, steady eyes, broad shoul- 
ders, and an old felt hat would occupy the screen. 
Luck and I beat the calendar, as it happened. 
For the ninth of June was still seven astronomical 
hours away, and the sun was contentedly declin- 
ing between Samson Mountain and Peekamose 
as I emerged from the fringe of scrub balsam and 
deposited my limp anatomy upon the ''topmost 
rock." My pack had put in its final licks on my 
shoulders with a vengeance as it found me near- 
ing that spot. Never, never climb High Point 

260 



A RENDEZVOUS WITH JUNE 261 

the way I did. It had seemed the shortest way, 
straight from the Reservoir to the top. And the 
mosquitoes did not seem to get out of wind. But, 
for anything equipped with less than six legs and 
a pair of wings, I advise the trail from West 
Shokan. 

The top was full pay for the climb; and the 
climb, despite the insects just mentioned, was joy 
enough for me with a summer ahead, school be- 
hind, and the pleasant hardships of the woods 
about me. When one mounts nearly three thou- 
sand feet in a mile, not even mosquitoes them- 
selves can take one's mind from the fact that the 
next place to put one's foot is overhead — or else 
very nearly overhead. Fortunately, I had time 
to be sensible, which means, in a question of 
mounting steep slopes, the slowest possible pace. 
The man who will pull one foot after another, 
taking time to place it, stepping around obstacles 
instead of over, never allowing himself to lose 
breath, can climb all day, will cover three times 
as much altitude as the chap who hurries, and at 
the end will be nearly as fresh as when he began. 
This is the solemnest truth, and therefore the hard- 
est to believe, and next to impossible to practise. 
But it pays. 

Nearly everybody not entirely barren of senti- 
ment has desired to spend a night on a mountain- 
top, and the number who yield to their desire is 



262 THE CATSKILLS 

so few that one would judge our race to be a very 
self-disciplining body if other explanations did 
not arise. Explanations do arise, and the people 
don't. I rest with saying that I am sorry. If I 
could have wafted a score of friends to the top 
of High Point that night, they would have granted 
me justification — while now — 

Mid- June below was the end of May on my peak. 
Strawberries that had made my dessert along the 
lake were in bud about the top. Columbines that 
had nodded heartlessly at me from their grottos 
near the base showed only the pale promise of 
their beauty in clumps of fernlike leaves. The 
sweet white violet grew small, but when luck led 
me to the proper flower I was rewarded with a 
breath more delicate than even that of the wild 
rose. 

My walk of the forenoon had been between fields 
of astounding brilliance. All the seasons had 
been kaleidoscoped into one, it seemed, and spread 
along the wayside for admiration's sake. A 
meadow, white with daisies in one corner, would 
be set on fire by the flames of orange hawk-weed, 
to be, in turn, extinguished by a shower of meadow- 
rue. Pools of blue gentian reflected heaven, and 
ripples of white clover broke here and there into 
a sweet-scented spray. 

A little way within the wood I saw the wild 
azalea and the buds of the laurel. In certain 



A RENDEZVOUS WITH JUNE 263 

places later we were to find the laurel in immense 
profusion. Clintonia, purple-fringed orchis, Sol- 
omon's seal, indeed all the delicate familiar love- 
liness of the spring wood, shone in whites and 
pinks, yellows and blues, along my path. And at 
the top the bunch-berry extended its white wel- 
come. 

I did not have to concern myself about food or 
shelter. I had carried the former already pre- 
pared, and for the latter I spread my rubber 
blanket on the thick moss in a little hollow beneath 
some stunted balsam. I could give my whole at- 
tention to the spectacle staged horizon-round. 

If I should work up a headache trying to por- 
tray the wonder of that night, I could not convince 
you that I enjoyed it ; neither am I such a trusting 
dotard as to try. At first I thought that I was n 't 
going to, either. My body-guard of gnats re- 
ceived my rebukes in a biting silence. But as the 
sun withdrew so did they, leaving a little blood 
still in the bank. 

I ate supper, sitting on a cloth-of -golden moss, 
leaning against a rock that had settled and hard- 
ened before ever the roots of the first carbonifer- 
ous fern had groped for soil. I looked over a sec- 
tion of the world that man thinks he controls, but 
that simply laughs in his face. I could see some 
of the tiny places where he had thrown a few 
boards together for shelter and where he forgets 



264^ THE CATSKILLS 

his vast labors in sleep. But I had to hunt for 
them. All about them swam the ineffable green 
of spring, light for fields and dark for woods; 
and out over the plain was reaching, creeping the 
effacing night. Only in one direction did man 
seem to have made his mark — in that marvelous 
lake, the Reservoir of Ashokan. 

It lay, outstretched and slim, amethyst above, 
sapphire beneath, a miracle to have been made by 
hands. 

Westward a tangle of mountain valleys were 
drowning in the twilight. Only a top here and 
there caught the last rose. 

The more extravagant is sentiment, the sooner 
it flies away; and I was glad to weight down my 
feelings with chicken sandwiches and hot tea. 
The absurd niceties of habit that make us go to 
bed when we are not sleepy, and sit up since it is 
not time to go to bed, lose something of their force 
on mountain-tops. I wrapped up in my blanket, 
and watched the rose turn to gray, the gray to 
colorless dark. The stars came from their hiding 
and began the night's march. There was no 
blackness. Probably I dozed. But it did not 
seem long until a faint shine appeared, a cloudlet 
turned a wild-rose pink, and there was a new 
day — the ninth of June. 

I am quite sure of one thing : if you think some 
action seems scarcely worth the labor, the dis- 



A RENDEZVOUS WITH JUNE 265 

comfort, and yet you 'd rather like to do it, that is 
the thing to gird your loins and do. There is noth- 
ing so weakening as ambition frustrated by doubt, 
nothing so encouraging as something put through, 
which is the chief retort the foolish mountaineer 
can make. There is scarcely anything sillier than 
marching up a mountain and then marching down 
again; there is scarcely anything more satisfying 
if you Ve wanted to do it. And as life is a succes- 
sion of flippant nothings for most, anyway, even a 
physical mountain-peak now and then need not 
seem too trivial to try. If there are sermons in 
stones, there is a good year's preaching in one 
mountain. 

Almost before the fawn-colored light could be 
called dawn, I was treated to such a matinee of 
bird-song as I have rarely heard. A flock of 
white throat sparrows sat concealed in the low 
trees, and gave their full-voiced cadences together, 
or following each other in quick succession, as in 
some Mozart allegretto. Their falling triplets, 
wistful at nightfall, are daintily glad at dawn, 
and to me, half asleep, seemed the very choir of 
fairyland. 

Coffee warmed me, and after I had watched the 
sun flood the great eastern valley, I made a fire of 
gnarled old wood, so that Brute might see the 
smoke, rolled in my blanket beneath the balsam, 
and — woke to a hand laid gently on my shoulder. 



CHAPTER XIX 

MOUNT ASHOKAN AND THE EESERVOIR 

ARISING at dawn in midsummer has one insu- 
perable disadvantage. The ordinary break- 
fast hour seems like noon, and noon like dooms- 
day finally arrived. As for the interval from 
doomsday till dusk — there is nothing calculated to 
give such a fair idea of eternity in advance. 
When I had finally awakened to the fact that Brute 
was there and had been there for two hours, had 
guessed the situation and prepared a meal, we 
sat down with an all-devouring passion to pick 
up the threads of the past and a little food. The 
latter he called dinner and I breakfast, the hour 
being the confusing one of ten by the zodiac, 
eleven by the government, and others slightly dif- 
ferent by our two watches. 

"When June chooses to smile, it is the most 
charming smile of the round year. The sky was 
clear to the very flying-off place, and the Reservoir 
shone, a revelation of completed beauty to Brute, 
who had seen it in the making. 

**It 's funny that lake was overlooked by the 
Almighty," he said devoutly. 

266 



MOUNT ASHOKAN AND RESERVOIR 269 

The remark crystallized what I had been think- 
ing. The lake was so beautiful, fitted so well into 
border-land of mountain and plain, that it did not 
look raw and new. To tell the geologic truth, it 
had been on the original plan of the globe. The 
surveyors found evidences of a pre-glacial lake. 
All they did was to put it back. This they did 
supremely well by damming the Esopus where the 
ice-sheet had worn down the embankment and let 
the water out. 

The story of the gigantic work is unfortunately 
submerged in the other stories of our incredible 
young century. It has been fascinatingly told by 
Dr. Edward Hagaman Hall in a work entitled 
' ' The Catskill Aqueduct, ' ' which he modestly calls 
a pamphlet, but which is a novelette for interest. 
He tells how drought came to New York ; how the 
supply of water, even when rationed out, fell un- 
til there was enough for but four more days ; and 
how the great city, on its islands and fringes of 
the continent, was in a panic. 

Far-seeing men clearly set forth the facts, and 
convinced by calculation that almost before a com- 
prehensive system of water-supply could be 
worked out the city would be in perpetual danger 
of water-famine. Since all the local sources were 
taxed, the attention was directed to the Catskills 
and Adirondacks — the two great park-lands of 
the Empire State. 



270 THE CATSKILLS 

Dr. Hall's well-pruned tale of the feats of en- 
gineering, the feats of finance, of social organiza- 
tion, elevate statistics to their proper level of in- 
terest. While the building of the Aqueduct was 
given less nation-wide attention than the contem- 
porary Canal at Panama, the labors were just as 
Herculean, the problems as staggering. To cre- 
ate a tunnel capable of delivering a half billion 
gallons of mountain water every day, to drive it 
through the solid rock of Manhattan, to conduct 
it beneath the Hudson at a level of 1,114 feet be- 
low the sea, to have it avoid subterranean caves, 
and, at one stroke to contrive a lake to mother 
it which should be pure, capacious, and as beau- 
tiful as poetry — surely this was a task to test the 
efficiency of a democracy. 

The site of the Reservoir contained some seven 
villages, a railroad, and many cemeteries. But 
the corpses weren't allowed to stand between six 
million thirsty souls and their thirst. So the 
villages of West Shokan, Boiceville, Brodhead, 
Olive Bridge, Brown Station, Glenford, Ashton, 
and West Hurley gave up their dead as well as 
their identity. Their lands were purified and sub- 
merged to the extent of over eight thousand acres, 
averaging a depth of fifty feet. This was enough 
water to drown out Manhattan Island to the depth 
of thirty feet, or, in other words, a hundred and 
thirty-two billion gallons. 



MOUNT ASHOKAN AND RESERVOIR 271 

Naturally, the dwellers between Ashokan and 
the sea have an interest in the way this flood is 
held in leash. There are five and a half miles of 
dams and dikes. The first line of defense is a 
line of boulders embedded in concrete and a hun- 
dred and ninety feet thick at the base, two hundred 
and forty feet high, and a thousand long. The 
entire dam is a mile long. 

The second line, of nearly five miles, is a dike 
whose heart is of concrete, its flesh of earth pressed 
almost to the consistency of granite. This runs 
along the south. To the east are other dikes. On 
the west and north the Catskills form a wall ris- 
ing abruptly from the plain of three thousand 
feet. 

Around this lake the State has built a road of 
great beauty. The construction and the setting 
are beautiful beyond the first visit to comprehend. 
Already its magnificence is known, and soon will 
be justly famous. When the trees that are 
planted have grown, and when the edges of the 
lake will have taken to themselves a wildness con- 
sonant to the mountain setting, then the forty- 
mile circle will have become a part of every mo- 
torist's itinerary. 

The Kingston people and the inhabitants of the 
by-lying villages must feel themselves translated, 
after so long staring across a waterless plain. 
With mountain-ranges, vistas of ravines, pine-cov- 



272 THE CATSKILLS 

ered points, waters sacred to the sun and forever 
free from spoliation, the white rites of the ' ' veiled 
women" in the beautiful aeration plant, the sim- 
ple and straightforward architecture of spillway 
and dividing weir, and ever the ribbon of road 
against the hills, — nothing more is needed to min- 
ister to the eye. 

There is much more than the eye can ever per- 
ceive implied in the accomplishment of this work. 
It spells the highest sort of triumph — popular co- 
operation with the genius of science. It forecasts 
a wise middle life for our century, which is so 
rampant in its adolescence. 

It is this triumph of civic enterprise that offsets 
the failure of brotherhood abroad, in a measure. 
New York's great parks and roads and citizen 
activities mean more than the things themselves. 
It is something to have insured New York City's 
water supply. It is something far greater to have 
employed thousands of men and handled millions 
of public money without political scandal and 
without a strike. Thanks to model conditions of 
housing, sanitation, food, and recreation, the army 
of workmen preserved an unprecedented morale. 
The morrow, we are told, belongs to the masses 
in their own right, and not as a gift from the few. 
New York State has shown the short cut to this 
morrow by using the faithful labor of the many. 



MOUNT ASHOKAN AND RESERVOIR 273 

under the direction of the few, for the good of 
all. 

The scheme for New York's water-supply can- 
not stop with the Ashokan. At Gilboa they are 
utilizing the Schoharie water, which will flow be- 
neath the mountains and into the Esopus at Shan- 
daken. The other Catskill water-sheds, the Rond- 
out and Catskfll, with their three hundred square 
miles, will probably be added to the five hundred 
and sixty-five of the Esopus and Schoharie. And 
then the Adirondacks ! 

Eventually the Catskills will be an immense 
pleasure park, as much of the Adirondack forest 
is now, set aside for the health, wealth, and hap- 
piness of the entire East. This does not mean 
that ancient settlers will be disinherited, nor that 
the timber, the game, the berries, and the fish 
cannot be used. It means that the great encircling 
populations will have a place, large as luxury and 
rich as nature, to recuperate in, where vandalism 
shall not intrude, and where such things as con- 
stitute the commonwealth may be enjoyed by all. 
May the Empire State continue to exercise her 
prerogatives as wisely as she has begun! 

We had sat for a while looking at the white 
lake stretched below us before Brute asked : 

''How many High Points is this we Ve been 
up?" 



274 THE CATSKILLS 

''About five." 

''Well, I suggest that we do a little mountain- 
naming ourselves. This grand-stand mountain is 
a kind of reserved seat for the Reservoir show, and 
I call it plumb foolish to mix it up with all the 
other High Points and High Peaks. What shall 
we christen it?" 

" It is the lake 's mountain, ' ' I suggested. ' ' But 
we can 't smash champagne or liberate a dove. ' ' 

"There 's the bug dope. We might christen it 
with citronella. ' ' 

But something better offered. Picking up the 
coffee-pot. Brute stood in a reverential attitude 
by the "topmost rock," on which he poured what 
remained of breakfast, saying: 

"With these grounds I dub thee Mount Asho- 
kan/' 

And so I hope the Lord High Surveyor may put 
it down. 



CHAPTER XX 

THE HAPPY VALLEY 

OUR mountain was not only the best view- 
point of the Reservoir that we had climbed 
to — it also gave us an illuminating idea of the 
country we were about to explore. As Utsayantha 
constitutes the northwest redoubt of Manitou's 
great fortress, so does Mount Ashokan hold the 
key to the southeast. To the north, northwest, 
and west rise the tumbled ranges of the southern 
Catskills, to the very vitals of which we wanted to 
penetrate. So, packing up, we made the road into 
South Hollow by midday, and fell, as had become 
our customary luck in the earlier spring, upon 
one of the most interesting fellows in the whole 
region — 'Gene Kerr, bear-killer. 

It was his bam that arrested us. Nine bear 
skulls and some skins of other beasts decorated 
this remarkable shack, and in a jiffy we were talk- 
ing about two-pound trout and the toothsomeness 
of bear-steak over the fence that separated us from 
Mr. Kerr and the tidiest little garden it has ever 
been the good fortune of deer to feed in. 

**You fellows must need a good meal in front 

275 



276 THE CATSKILLS 

to balance those air packs," said Mr. Kerr, lean- 
ing on his hoe. 

*'Just what we 're looking for, a three-course 
balancer," we cried. 

**Well, I guess she kin fix you up." 

All through dinner we listened to the hunting 
recollections of this vigorous old man, whose age 
was hmted at neither by the light in eye nor by 
his upstanding bearing. Not only bear and deer 
and trout and partridges and gray squirrels were 
his frequent game, but he liked the fun of bring- 
ing in coons and skunks, mink and woodchuck, 
white rabbits, porcupines, and an occasional 
weasel. He said that he heard bob-cats occasion- 
ally. 

**It beats all, how thick deers is gettin'," he 
said, and the talk would veer around to bears con- 
tinually. 

' * They just swarm in the beech -nut years. I got 
two last year, when they snowed up, and three 
afore that. Sheep 's head in a trap done it. One 
of 'em weighed in three hundred pound, dressed." 

He took down his guns to explain their points 
as affectionately as a mother would her twins. 
His graying hair seemed no more to betoken the 
long winter than October flurries, and his love of 
the woods — just the day-long wandering in them, 
so he had gun in hand — was fine to see. 

His wife, equally energetic, had other tastes. 



THE HAPPY VALLEY 277 

*'0h, if somebody would only come along and 
start something!" she exclaimed. ''Ever since 
the water-works was started, the valley 's been 
dead — no summer people, nobody to sell butter and 
eggs to. And it 's a beautiful place, too." 

We acknowledged it. 

*'And he spends his days, and nights too, chas- 
ing through the woods, with me wonderin' what 's 
happened to him. Not so long ago he kep ' me up 
to midnight while he was toting in a bear." 

''No! Only the hind quarters, ma." 

Mr. Kerr's present living was being made out 
of ginseng root, it appeared. I hope that Mrs. 
Kerr gets her wish. Truly the valley of the Bush 
Kill is a secluded haven of extraordinary charm. 
Up South Hollow goes a trail to Mount Ashokan ; 
up Mine Hollow can be found the diggings of those 
deluded prospectors who thought that they at last 
had found gold; up Kanape Brook are charming 
little falls; and along Watson Hollow, the main 
thoroughfare from West Shokan to the western 
country, are sites for summer homes offering 
every inducement a summer home can have. 

We had thought to climb Peekamose, but found 
that there was no trail, and that bellying clouds 
were drifting too thickly over the ramparts ahead 
of us to offer much assurance to explorers. So, 
now balanced fore and aft, we left our entertain- 
ers, to cross the divide. 



278 THE CATSKILLS 

In the darkening afternoon, on a road arched 
with trees and soft with grass, we marched si- 
lently. Vistas up wooded ravines opened up for 
the moment, and little waterfalls flung some word 
at us as we passed ; but, for the most part, we were 
free from the outer world. Even the birds, which 
had made the settlements bright with song and 
flutter, were few. A vireo, looking at us big-eyed, 
a warbler sighing to himself in the deep wood, a 
disconsolate pewee, that was all. 

The road climbed for about four miles, reached 
a level, less densely wooded, — where an old father 
porcupine slid down a birch as slick as an apple- 
thieving urchin, — then began a descent of five 
miles to Sundown. We met nobody, said almost 
nothing. It was good enough to be walking to- 
gether again; and, though I was tired, being not 
yet hardened, we swung along the narrow lake 
by the road, confident that we would be put up at 
Peekamose Lodge. 

Peekamose Lodge sleeps in a little gulf of 
rock formed by the intersection of two ravines. 
One house is occupied by a care-taker who owns 
a savage beast miscalled a dog but really a rein- 
carnation of Nero. Across the ravine the other 
house is occupied by a gentleman at odds with his 
only neighbor, and guarded, not by a dog, but by 
a flock of trained gnats. Thither we climbed, 
footsore and hungry, after having tried to find 



THE HAPPY VALLEY 279 

some hospitable soul at the care-taker's, where 
Nero was jumping around on his chain and act- 
ing as if he wanted a little fun with Christians. 

The gentleman who lived in such splendid isola- 
tion referred me to his opponent for supper, and 
to that man — who had just returned from some- 
where — we wearily climbed back across the no- 
man 's-land ravine. The rival gentleman said that 
the enemy always referred people to him for 
meals, and that he was n't allowed anyway and he 
knew it, and besides there was n't anything in the 
house. 

Only weariness quenched the wrath within me. 
Sundown village was miles away; a mist was be- 
ginning to seep through the foliage; the insults 
from Nero, added to the injuries from the gentle- 
man's gnats, were intolerable. The meek are not 
uniformly successful in inheriting the earth, it 
appears. Brute, equally enraged, but also tired 
to a semblance of civility, inquired of our future 
prospects. 

' * ' Down the road about four mile there 's a post- 
master who may take you in. He 's a queer one, 
too, and writes books." 

Judging that anything that seemed queer to 
this strange company might suit us, we set out 
once more in the falling dusk. It was a road that 
I can now look back on with pleasure, but then 
the fatigue that ached from shin to thigh pre- 



280 THE CATSKILLS 

eluded any but a lamenting interest in the beau- 
tiful curves, the rich wood smells, the extraordi- 
nary waterfalls. One of these had eaten a hole 
through the cliff, pouring through the ring in a 
cascade of plenty. We came to a blue pool where 
the waters of the Rondout, the clearest of all wa- 
ters, had caught the secret of the skies screened 
from them. It was in some such pool that the 
old-world goddesses used to bathe. If Pan ever 
comes to America, he will love the Blue Hole 
most of all, and its rocky ledges crowned with the 
fine-textured beech are certainly the place for him 
to sit and make his music in. Even to us, droop- 
ing with exhaustion, there was still a prayer of 
admiration possible. 

At length we came to a house that might be the 
postmaster's, though there was no sign, and a 
Union Jack and tri-color flew from the flag-pole 
with the Stars and Stripes. We knocked. A 
man, the instant impression of whom was me- 
dium height, graying hair, a kindly, inquisitive 
eye, and a genial smile, opened the door. 

"Is this — are you — that is, can you direct us 
to the postmaster of PeekamoseT' I asked, my 
wits sliding into first rather slowly after the long 
pull. 

He already had guessed the situation, and in a 
quiet but systematic manner set about making us 
feel as much at home as the Prince of Wales at 



THE HAPPY VALLEY 281 

Windsor Castle. From the bathroom we emerged 
clothed in our status quo ante; from the dining- 
room we sauntered as satisfied as pelicans; from 
the den we retired to the living-room, beginning 
to wonder just what the limitations of this man 
were ; and from the living-room we went to bed, — 
six hours later, — fully satisfied with the capabili- 
ties of Chance as guide and guardian. We had 
stumbled upon the radiant House of Dimock, its 
master, author, explorer, hunter, ex-millionaire. 

There is a beautiful flower that unfolds, petal 
by petal, beginning with thorn and ending with 
a rare perfume — once in a hundred years. So did 
our stay in the Happy Valley seem to me. Com- 
pare that enraging moment when we had turned 
from the slimy-fanged Nero and the stings of 
outrageous fortune (and the gnats) to the cactus 
at its worst; compare the hospitable welcome at 
the door to the first petal, that evening of conver- 
sation to the full bloom of pleasure, and you can 
readily see how the same thing could never hap- 
pen over again in a century. 

Anthony W. Dimock 's story, as he tells it him- 
self in ''Wall Street and the Wilds," is a sort 
of Arabic-American Nights Tale which immedi- 
ately relates him to the Aladdin family. He was 
not only a poor boy who lisped in numbers and the 
millions came : he was still boyish when they went 
— a rare figure in the annals of millionaires. He 



282 THE CATSKILLS 

kept his youth by hunting buffalo. Later he 
sought to keep the buffalo by turning the senti- 
ment of his famous Camp Fire Club toward con- 
servation. Oscillating between the labyrinthine 
ways of finance and the open wilderness, he has 
enriched his life with such deposits of adventure, 
and mingling in big events, that to open the vein 
of reminiscence before the fire on a wet night in 
June is to land one in an El Dorado of wonder- 
ment. 

The den, clearly, had been stocked by one who 
understood life. Art, humor, achievement, the 
love of people, the standing for beauty, sanity, dar- 
ing, and the unknown quantity that gives the mel- 
lowing touch to daring — these were the qualities 
represented. His son Julian's pictures of tarpon- 
jumping, of the Everglades, are probably as fine 
as can be taken. The men who have sent him 
words of sympathy or congratulation are many 
of the most interesting men of the United States. 
The strange coincidences that a long and active 
life have collected seem to take the thread from 
Atropos. The den was a room to revert to in 
delight at the fullness of life. 

I think the great fact of our visit was that a 
man who had looked into the extreme brilliance of 
success, the extreme blackness of defeat, should 
have such kind and unembittered eyes. They had 
caught the softening of the June hills as well as 



THE HAPPY VALLEY 283 

the sparkle of the Rondout. It was Nature's tri- 
umph, this capture of a man who had seen every- 
thing, of a woman who had the world to choose 
from — the Catskills' triumph in particular. Yet, 
as we continued on the morrow down the beauti- 
ful windings of the valley, we did not wonder why 
neither Florida nor the West had failed in com- 
petition with its soft beauties to lure these people 
for aye. There was something ultimately fit- 
ting in the environment to their open hospitality. 
And Brute and I have often referred to the charm- 
ing picture since: the low gray house set in the 
green dale, flashing brook and wooded mountain, 
the lord and lady of the demesne dispensing a 
gracious hospitality to wanderers, while ever and 
anon there arrive messengers from the outside 
world with tribute, or, the best of tribute — friends. 



CHAPTER XXI 

BEAVEEKILL BUSH 

THE Catskill country resembles a four-leaved 
clover. One leaf includes the region north 
of the Esopus and east of Stony Clove, with the 
ancient marine bluff as its feature. Another lies 
west of Stony Clove and north of the railroad 
running from Phoenicia to Margaretville, declin- 
ing from mountainous to rolling, pastoral coun- 
try, famous for its cows. The third leaf, in the 
southeast, gathers together the jumble of moun- 
tains east of Big Injin Valley and north of the 
Rondout, an excellent camping land, with open 
woods, clear streams, and interesting heights. 
The fourth leaf, the rare one, lies to the south- 
west, including the mountains west of Big Injin 
and the flatter, pond-dotted second-growth of the 
wild and untenanted lands from the Delaware 
south for twenty miles. It was in search of the 
nature of this fourth leaf, of which no one could 
tell us definitely, that Brute and I set out. 

Below Sundown the country falls and flattens, 
so we turned to keep within the sight of hemlock, 

284 



BEAVERKILL BUSH 285 

eschewing Eureka and Claryville where the Never- 
sink's two branches become of one mind, and 
made our way along an old wood trail, light- 
hearted from our send-off from Happy Valley, 
toward the East Branch of the Neversink. The 
country was in its most charming improvisation 
on the general theme of spring. Every turn of 
the trail received us with blossom and bird-song 
and sped us with some beautiful picture. The 
sky filled early with islands of white in a sea of 
blue that would have gladdened the blase eyes of 
the daughters of the Hesperides. 

Groves of fern grew out into the trail, shelter- 
ing carpets of littler growth : white violet and the 
white-veined partridge-vine, anemone and oxalis, 
the foam-flower and clintonia, gold-thread and 
bunch-berry, twisted stalk and Solomon's seal. 
We saw mosses in richer pattern than Persian 
ever dreamed, hillside glory, and the glow of sandy 
places, meadows here and there dancing with color 
— so much beauty that our fugitive appreciation 
of it seemed pitifully scant. 

The forest, too, was exquisitely varied. Occa- 
sionally a grove of hemlocks would enhance the 
lighter greens of new leaves on the oaks and ma- 
ples, poplars and beeches, and along the road a 
veteran pine would dignify an entire view. And 
always blues blended with greens, from the smile 
of the blue-eyed grass, through the wild iris of 



286 THE CATSKILLS 

the swamp, to the beds of lupine and gentian and 
others I did not know. 

There was no turn of the way that did not en- 
counter an infinite gaiety of life: cinque-foil in 
the acre, evenly starring the spaces left by the 
less prodigal wild strawberry. We found some 
trilliums, and now and then a rare blossom when 
we stopped to look for it: the waxy-white pyrola 
growing out of a warm bed of pine-needles, and 
the fragrant pipsissewa beside it. Laurel grew 
in terraces, blackberries in mounds, and the wild 
honeysuckle 's pink and white showed like a dairy- 
maid between the duchess laurel and the girl- 
graduate daisy. Nowhere have I seen such con- 
fusion of seasons as a thousand feet of altitude 
could make in a morning's walk. And I have not 
told the half — partly because I have no patience 
with catalogs, and partly for lack of names. And, 
when the flowers and the shadows of trees and the 
shapes of clouds have been enumerated, there are 
still the perfumes and the songs of birds. 

The last were in such confusion as to make an 
incessant counterplay of melody. In the open 
fields bobolinks and meadow-larks, red-wings and 
the tribe of sparrows poured out their special 
ecstasies, as ladies before a concert, nobody lis- 
tening to the others. But along the streams and 
in the soberer wood there was much finesse of 
melody, the dreamy white-throat and drowsy 



BEAVERKILL BUSH 287 

pewee enhancing the tiny motifs of vireo and 
warbler, which the imagination seized upon and 
carried along until some fresh voice, the mourn- 
ing-dove, some distant hermit-thrush, or bell-clear 
tanager, would add a new wealth to the chants and 
madrigals. 

As for the sparkle of goldfinch and dodge of 
wren, flash of warbler and flit of kinglet — they can- 
not be set down any closer than can be caught the 
exact amount of star-glitter at a given moment. 
There is but one allaying thought. Next June the 
same festival will be played through again, and 
those who are so lucky as to be tramping those 
same trails can bathe in those pleasures which I 
so charitably refrain from trying to compute. 

Up the Neversink, lumbermen were getting out 
ash for airplanes, and a little farther up we came 
to a glorious growth of spruce and hemlock. 
Then, quite unwarned, we were brought by Coinci- 
dence, Fate's little brother, into as embarrassing 
a position as it has been my lot to meet. 

In the slight breeze we had smelled smoke. 
Brute suggested that we follow it up. Breaking 
through some tangle, we heard a hurried noise as 
of something running, a smash of sticks, and then 
quiet. Following up the smoke odor, which had 
drifted down a glen, we came upon a queer-looking 
impromptu camp, where a loose fire smoldered. 
By it sat an ordinary tin can, which had once con- 



288 THE CATSKILLS 

tained beans, but now held some tan-colored stuff 
that we supposed was tea. The beans were in a 
frying-pan, left burning on the coals. Then we 
saw, with horrid surprise, the skinned hind quar- 
ters of a fawn. Its little amber-colored cloven 
hoofs could have belonged to nothing else. 

Whatever nature the suddenly deserting camp- 
ing party might own to, it certainly seemed mys- 
terious to us — mysterious and sickening. How 
people could, in the clean woods, fall so low as 
to kill fawns, we failed to see — failed with indig- 
nation. We were standing around, discussing the 
loathsome riddle presented, when, almost without 
noise, a fairly well dressed man with a long paper 
roll in his hand stepped over a log and was at our 
side. 

"Well, gentlemen," he said, quite gently, 
**you 've been wanted now for two days for that 
killing on Deer Shanty Brook. This is too bad." 

He turned over the small carcass with his toe. 

I did not look at Brute. Somehow, I felt that 
he was blushing. I felt guiltier than if I had 
killed a dozen fawns, and probably looked it. I 
said, ''Despite the evidence, we don't know as 
much about this as you." 

The warden carelessly unbuttoned a button on 
his coat, and the badge showed. He looked a bit 
confused himself. 



BEAVERKILL BUSH 289 

''Where 's Deer Shanty Brook?" asked Brute, 
recovering. 

''Where you were this time yesterday." He 
did n 't say it with assurance. 

"Do you really think that my friend and I 
killed that fawn and were concocting this horrible 
meal?" I asked. 

He took another look at Brute, who had recov- 
ered from his guilty surprise. I remember think- 
ing that I would never judge a man by appear- 
ances. Then he said: 

"Well, you don't certainly look it. But I guess 
you '11 have to prove it. ' ' 

"All right. Back there are some lumbermen. 
They saw us pass an hour ago." 

Brute was looking at some mud by the fire. It 
was tracked up. He put his foot in one of the 
tracks. 

"The devil takes a ten," he said, with a laugh. 

The warden laughed a little. 

"Will you go back with me to the men?" he 
asked. 

"Sure," we assented. 

"Well, I guess you won't have to. But what 
are you doing with those packs ? ' ' 

In surprise, I had forgotten them. But nobody 
could want clearer evidence that, as poachers, we 
were abominably dressed for the part. 



290 THE CATSKILLS 

We told him about the night before with Mr. 
Dimock, and then he confessed that he wasn't a 
game but a fire warden, and so was always inter- 
ested in stray smoke. We marked the place on 
the trail, and continued with him. We found him 
a most interesting man. He told us that a good 
deal of poaching was done. One of the neatest 
tricks was pulled off by two automobiles, one 
blocking the road to a pond while the other went 
in, jacked the deer with its lights, and often got 
one. But the mounted police were efficient, and 
the warden thought that the two or three rowdies 
responsible for the fawn-murder would proba- 
bly be caught within twenty-four hours. In that 
neighborhood the deer seemed abundant. Our 
new friend told us that he had seen twenty-two at 
one time on a ridge, in autumn when the leaves 
had fallen before the season opened. 

He explained the fire system: The entire re- 
gion is dominated by seven stations, from which 
the hundred thousand acres of land belonging to 
the State can be watched for fire. These are: 
Mohonk on the south ; Twaddell Point on the west ; 
High Point in Wawarsing for the southern wilder- 
ness; Hunter for the entire northern region; and 
Belle Ayre, Balsam Lake Mountain, and Tremper 
for the great central forest. 

The State land, in four counties, requires more 
than fifty fire wardens and about eight rangers. 



BEAVERKILL BUSH 291 

In dry weather these are stationed at strategic 
points in order to throw their forces in the very 
shortest warning upon an incipient conflagration. 
Thanks to their watchfulness, the excellence of 
the telephone service, the fire lanes, the response 
of the workmen, and the increased carefulness of 
hunters and fishermen, the Catskill loss for 1917 
was about a thousand dollars, the expense of fight- 
ing the sixty-four fires that caused the loss was 
but five hundred dollars, and the acreage burned 
two thousand acres, mostly brush and second 
growth. 

It is interesting to know that of these 64 fires 
careless smokers caused 13, locomotives 33, berry- 
pickers 1, hunters 4, brush-burners 8, incendiaries 
2, children 2, and a burning building, 1. 

As we walked, our warden filled us with infor- 
mation so interesting that we would have liked 
to annex him for as long as we should thirst for 
knowledge. He said that the leaf fires in the 
spring, before the new leaves had come out to 
keep the ground from drying, and in the fall be- 
fore the autumn rains, were the worst, running 
fast and spreading far. Also, fires along farm- 
lands through dry grass were swift and sometimes 
dangerous. Thanks to the top-lopping law, which 
requires lumbermen to cut up conifer tops down 
to the three-inch size and so prevents inflammable 
slash accumulating, there was almost no danger 



292 THE CATSKILLS 

of those vast furnaces that used to follow in the 
wake of lumbermen. 

At nightfall we three came to the road leading 
along the West Branch of the Neversink. The 
warden continued his way toward the Winnisook 
Club of snowy memories, while Brute and I 
turned down to Branch, parting with the liveliest 
good feeling and many a laugh at the mode of our 
introduction around the poachers' fire. 

Branch is charmingly situated, and we slept 
with a sense of well being, surrounded for miles 
on every side by a wilderness forever unassailable 
by a completely predatory lumbering. The State 
owns some of the land, and will own more. It is 
a pity that it could not have been prudent enough 
to own the fishing. Clubs or millionaires have 
bought the lands or the rights to almost all the 
good trout water in the Catskills. To be sure, 
there is much of the Esopus, the streams from 
Hunter, some water about Willowemoc, and a few 
scattered brooks where any one can cast his fly. 
But from those the first fisherman can take the 
cream and the early small boy the rest. The great 
streams, both branches of the Neversink, and the 
Bushkill are closed to the public. 

From Branch the easy way would have been to 
follow the road down to Clary^nlle — and a very 
lovely road it is — and so out to the pond region. 
But we were just beginning to tap our energies. 



BEAVERKILL BUSH 293 

and all unwittingly set out upon a monumental 
day by short-cutting up Fall Brook and over to 
the grass-grown road that leads by Tunis Lake. 
Again the clouds rose in piled islands; but the 
day was rougher, and the blue sea slopped over 
in a wash of big drops, leaving an iridescent jewel- 
work on the sparkling pines and a curse upon the 
lips as we plunged through the bushes. 

It was a lonely morning. In the deeper woods 
the birds were asleep and we saw no game, and 
the only man we met was an unreassuring speci- 
men who exhorted us to turn in our tracks to avoid 
getting irretrievably lost. Though those were not 
the exact words he used. Judging by the amount 
of profanity an ex-lumberjack can control, I should 
argue that conversation in the absolute wilder- 
ness must consist entirely of addresses to the 
Deity. 

Without describing our climb breath for breath, 
I can recommend the top of Balsam Lake Moun- 
tain for those who wish to push into a semi-path- 
less wilderness, mount through hazes of scrub and 
m.osquitos, to emerge on a steel-towered eminence 
and get a view of all the blues in heaven and be- 
neath. Here one is at last centered in wilder- 
ness. There are no towns of any size within a 
day's journey, and the villages do not show. A 
solid block of forest marches away on every side, 
down into valleys and up over farther ranges. 



294 THE CATSKILLS 

There is no smoke, no noise, no visible highway, 
no farmers in the ofiQng — nothing but an unfea- 
tured forest wherein lurks a second-rate oppor- 
tunity to play Daniel Boone. 

Why this great stretch of second-growth woods, 
watered by delightful streams, scattered with 
small ponds, secluded because of the absence of 
approaching roads, and full of lesser game, should 
have been ignored by those who claim that they 
love the Catskills, I cannot surmise. One misses 
the beauty of old woods. The shut-in-ness of the 
trails leads to temporary melancholy. Food must 
be brought, for the native never reckons on an 
alien appetite. Bugs there are in season. But, 
to counteract all these disadvantages, there is an 
isolation that lures one into the belief that he is 
far from cities, a beauty of rolling ranges that 
appeals to people who like their views untouristed. 
I know of no place in the entire Catskill country 
more charming than the valley of the Bushkill. 

It was in this back country, along the upper edge 
of Sullivan County, that Brute and I had another 
one of those delightful surprises that a pedestrian 
runs a hundred chances to the motorist's one of 
meeting. On the map of Sullivan County I had 
counted a hundred and twenty-odd ponds, and, 
although it meant running out of the mountainous 
Catskills to see some of them, I was curious to 
discover this region, which I had always supposed 



BEAVERKILL BUSH 295 

as dry as a desert. A very little sufficed. Go to 
the Adirondacks for water. But, as we were 
wending our misty way back into the highlands, 
we stopped at the top of a hill to the north of 
Willowemoc to make inquiry, and found that we 
had come to the domain, residence, and person of 
John Karst, who was the premier wood-engraver 
of school texts in our land. 

He invited us in to exchange news before the 
hearth. His daughter, for whom is named Esther 
Falls, told us the interesting tale of their strange 
country, still a half wilderness. Their house, with 
its great ceiling beams and huge fireplaces, was 
full of stories. It had been built in the great days 
of the Livingston era, now vanished from the re- 
gion, the memory of which is preserved in the 
town of Livingston Manor. It had been the scene 
of the meetings of the Sheepskin Indians, those 
whites who met in disguise to protest their taxes. 
Indian-hunters and grizzled trappers had talked 
before its chimney-place. Strings of fish, in the 
custom of those days, had hung from the rafters 
to dry while the talk went on. 

Nor has John Karst neglected to add to the 
interest of this notable mansion. Quaint bric-a- 
brac, souvenirs of his more active days, valuable 
paintings, real tiles from the Low Countries, wam- 
pum, and the curiosities of many a land, each with 
some tale, came near to beguiling us over-long. 



296 THE CATSKILLS 

Brute, whose edge for this sort of thing had never 
been taken off by the indiscriminate horrors of 
museums, roamed from relic to relic. I could 
scarcely tear myself away from the reminiscences 
of John Karst's long immersion in the fascinating 
life of books and printers. 

With reluctance we left, coming out from the 
cheery fire into the mist with the feeling that of 
all unreal things this was the strangest, this un- 
heralded hour in the high estate of civilization in 
the midst of our back-country ramble. In this re- 
gion, overrun with rabbits, deer, and bear, we had 
found a friend of all publishers ruling a demesne 
in a half -feudal way. Truly the surprises of the 
Catskills never cease. 

Our road brought us through a deep and exten- 
sive wood, over hill and down dale, until a precip- 
itous slope sent us hurrying down to Turnwood 
on the Beaverkill, much the wiser for our long 
detour and no whit worse. Holding true to Cats- 
kill type, the land was one of beautiful combina- 
tions. Hill met valley in a succession of soft 
curves. Brooks poured into the mother stream 
from little gorges. Hemlocks darkened the water- 
courses, and the farther ranges shone with maple, 
ash, and oak. Toward the east the larger moun- 
tains looked very blue in the chastened lig'ht. 
There lurked still much of the aboriginal mystery 
in the forest dimness. We strode on without 



BEAVERKILL BUSH 297 

much talk. I think I had some sense of the im- 
pending. Everything was so quiet that one could 
almost hear the mumbling of the Fates. It was a 
theatrical place that Brute selected, however, and 
I certainly had n 't guessed exactly what was com- 
ing when he said : 

*' To-morrow 's the 15th, and my furlough 's 
up." 

''Your furlough!" 

He smiled broadly at my tone of astonishment. 

"Yes; the leave for loafing I 've allowed my- 
self." 

"And I suppose you '11 court-martial yourself 
and be your own firing squad at dawn if — " 

"Don't joke," he said. "I enlist to-morrow, 
though I hate to quit the party. ' ' 

I would not make a good guide over the rest 
of the region we traversed that afternoon. I 
know we came to the brow of a monstrous hill and 
looked off into a dim and disfeatured landscape. 
I remember that we took the train from Arena 
to Arkville, and by luck found our way to a charm- 
ing inn under the eaves of Mt. Pakatakan. There 
were few guests, and we sat late alone before a 
grateful fire. I had seen others off to the war — 
some, in England, never to come back. But in the 
boy's eyes there was no thought of that, only an 
eagerness that I wondered I had not interpreted 
before. And in the morning the train was merci- 



298 THE CATSKILLS 

fully on time, nor did our jests run out. Only in 
the hand-shake were the words we would not say. 
Such is the Anglo-Saxon way of bidding farewell, 
perhaps forever. 



CHAPTER XXII 

THE CATSKILL PARK 

DURING the progress of that day when Brute 
and I had reduced the art of being invited 
to motor to a strict science, we had come through 
Roxbury. As everybody who has been through 
Roxbury knows, to see it once is to be enthralled 
for life. Consequently, when I was deserted by 
my enlister, I determined to make that charming 
place my headquarters from which I could sally 
on a raid of investigation and to which I could 
return to digest the spoils. 

Roxbury has a civic consciousness. It has its 
history, which was recently reviewed in a pageant 
admirably constructed by Margaret MacLaren 
Eager, beginning with the decision of John and 
Betty More in Scotland to emigrate, continuing 
with pictures of Indian times, Colonial customs, 
and coming down to the moment with a fine tribute 
to John Burroughs, fellow townsman. It has a 
beautiful church given by the Goulds, a park, and 
an environment where Nature has been kindest. 
There are mountains, but they do not shut one in. 

299 



300 THE CATSKILLS 

There are a myriad streams. And the people, in 
addition to their daily business, have one and all 
caught the cue of happiest living. No one comes 
to their town without being made to feel at home, 
without reacting to this fillip of good-fellowship. 
I am sure that this is not merely a personal im- 
pression. I have talked with many other strang- 
gers who acknowledged the flavor of kindness pe- 
culiar to this spot. 

From Eoxbury I made several excursions, to 
keep fit. One, on a day of picture-postcard col- 
ors, included Pine Hill and the summit of Belle 
Ayre. A steel tower gives a view of the slide on 
Slide; of Double-top, another elephant; of Over- 
look, a far retreating wave; of the sharp-edged 
Stony Clove ; of Utsayantha in the dim northwest ; 
of Tower and Windham High Peak. Big Injin 
Valley is particularly appealing from Belle Ayre, 
with its Lost Clove nosing into the mountain's 
side. Big Balsam Lake Mountain rises high with 
its wealth of forest about it. I stood on the porch 
of the Grand View Hotel, which is confronted by 
the long wall of Belle Ayre and looks up Big 
Injin Valley to a distant but still impressive view 
of Slide and the Wittenberg. I curved through 
the daisied pastorals of the Bovina valleys, and 
took many another jaunt, going sometimes to rec- 
ommended places, but oftener where only the 
names suggested something of interest. 




L^ 



THE CATSKILL PARK 303 

The Catskills have got off better than other pic- 
turesque parts of our country in the matter of 
names. Esopus, Ashokan, Never sink, Schoharie, 
Vly, Onti Ora, Devasego, Ticetonyk, Utsayantha, 
Pine Orchard, Peekamose — these are beautiful 
and have some character. But, like the forest, the 
animal life, the wild-flowers even, names are in 
danger. There are too many renamed for cap- 
italists and chewing-gums. History depends on 
names, and a nation's chronicles are rich or thin 
according to the ease with which time-laden desig- 
nations are changed in behalf of the richest corner 
grocer. There ought to be a censorship for new 
names. If the Rubicon and Rheims were rechris- 
tened Mudbank and New Ashland, if Olympus 
were rewritten High Peak, the world would be the 
loser. The historical societies had better start a 
little research and fix up some of the Maple Shades 
and Pleasantvilles, or poets will never be much 
moved to celebrate our own heroics. 

I met a gentleman, the other day, who told me 
that he had been instrumental in getting the name 
of one town, whose pretty name I forget, changed 
to Arkville. Arhville! Even Noah himself for- 
bore to do that! *' Tabby-cat" or ''Mule" would 
not be a more witless scream. Since the gentle- 
man was eighty-five, I could but grin and bear it. 
But I silently wished that he had descendants who 
would have to dwell in the suburbs of Arkville — 



304. THE CATSKILLS 

named, I suppose, Larkville or Darkville or Bark- 
ville. People need not complain about the dun 
placidity of their existence while they are content 
with such mediocrity of milieu. The cheerful ugli- 
ness of a baboon's face is at least stimulating, and 
if there be any virtue in personality, it were bet- 
ter to struggle with Przemysl than lapse to the 
imbecility of much of our present nomenclature. 

While roaming the Catskill woods alone I had 
an excellent chance to compare the beauties and 
advantages of a hard-wood forest with those of 
the soft-wood and mixed forests of the Adiron- 
dacks, with which I had been more familiar. Un- 
doubtedly the most appealing tree-land in the 
East is the unburned, coniferous, primeval forest 
occurring in the gifted recesses of the Adiron- 
dacks. There the great trees are far apart ; there 
is little brush; the floor is soft, spongy, thick, and 
occasional huge birches add just the final touch 
of lighter beauty. In the Adirondacks there are 
less than 100,000 acres of this left, and in the 
Catskills none at all. In the Catskills there are 
only 40,000,000 board feet of soft woods standing, 
three quarters of it spruce and the rest hemlock, 
with just a little balsam on the high slopes, and a 
scattering of pine, cedar, and tamarack. There 
are 133,000,000,000 board feet of hard woods, birch 
and maple each totaling more than all the soft 
woods, the beech and poplar totaling respectively 



THE CATSKILL PARK 305 

thrice and twice as much as all the remaining mis- 
cellaneous hard woods. 

Compared to the great Adirondack wilderness, 
with its 8,000,000,000 of board feet, the Catskills 
seem a mere wood-lot. But if you will look down 
from Belle Ayre or Slide or Balsam Lake Moun- 
tain, you will heave a sigh of satisfaction that 
there is so much of it. 

The future of the Catskills depends upon its 
trees. These are situated inside an area called 
the Forest Preserve, in which is the Catskill Park, 
the choicer, central area to be even more rigor- 
ously protected. When a man steps from his train 
into the deep wood and sees the birch shining 
about him, the great sugar-maples forming vast 
overheads of green, the beeches a dense bower of 
shade, and here and there a hemlock, a locust, a 
thorn-tree, a poplar grove, or a sentinel pine, he 
gives thanks that someone was far-sighted enough 
to foresee the Park and put the legislation through. 

If I were landscape-gardener to the Elysian 
Fields, I would have them mostly forest. There 
should be worshipful groves of white pine for the 
devout, and much bed-assuaging balsam for the 
sleepy; there should be hemlock for dignity, and 
the delicate tamarack and all the spruces. But 
also there should be beautiful vales of beech, and 
shore-lines of white birch, and many another land- 
scape as if it were the Catskills. Nor would I for- 



306 THE CATSKILLS 

get to have much white ash and the coon-beloved 
basswood, as in the lower valleys of all the Cats- 
kills. But I would not admit those yellow-birch 
thickets and sapling cherries of which one finds 
so much in the burnt sections. 

In the Catskill Park it is hard to say whether 
the maple, the beech, or the birch is the prevailing 
tree ; for, at one time or another, each makes such 
an appeal as to make you wish it predominant. 
The birch is first, by all standards of beauty. 
Against winter snows it shines slim and pale, 
and in the midsummer dusk it shows shy and sup- 
ple and worthy of Diana. Beneath the white bark 
is a crocus green, and beneath that umber, and 
beneath that honest wood which is good for burn- 
ing, green or tinder-dry. The birch can be used 
for shelter by day and for torch by night. It al- 
ways responds to the intelligent demand, is free 
from the plague — the supreme example in nature 
of use and beauty going hand in hand. 

The beech is also invaluable. In spring its deli- 
cate foliage is the tenderest of dreams this side 
the tamarack's; in summer it becomes a bower 
of shade; in fall a burnished marvel of beaten 
gold; and in winter the white parchment tissue 
tries to clothe the gray nakedness of the smooth- 
boled tree. Its wood is strong. Its fruit, the 
three-sided nut, keeps more animals from starva- 
tion, probably, than any other single item of diet. 



THE CATSKILL PARK 307 

except possibly field-mice. Even the leaf buds all 
the winter long, slim spikes of brown, are marks 
of beauty. The beech at its perfection is the epi- 
tome of strength and grace and color, — a forest 
panther. 

The sugar-maple was created on a happy day. 
"Why some trees should be so heavily endowed, 
while others languish in poverty of fiber and of 
sap, is a mystery that I dedicate to John Bur- 
roughs to explain. It is a tree to set before a 
king, if he be sweet-toothed. He will have sugar 
for his mush, syrup for his cakes, and all tried 
out over a sugar-maple flame. For, though it 
seems sinful to cut the tree for stoves, yet it is an 
excellent fire-wood. 

The Catskills are a vast expanse of confection- 
ery. Wild honey, wild strawberries, wild sugar! 
In late March or early April whole groves of gray 
mottled trees glitter with buckets at their waists. 
To look at the slow drops, and to realize that it 
takes fifty quarts of sap to make a pound of sugar, 
is to appreciate the privileges of the corner gro- 
cery. What an unmerciful life our forebears led ! 
Flax to grow, candles to dip, sugar to concoct from 
oozy trees. No wonder Longfellow thought that 
life was real and earnest. On the other hand, 
when you cease to be a looker-on and begin to 
manipulate your own testing pans, to pour the 
syrup on snow, when spring is in the air and this 



308 THE CATSKILLS 

celestial candy in your mouth you wonder how 
anybody can bear to patronize a store. 

The spruce cannot rank with this gifted com- 
pany. It appeals neither to the palate nor to the 
eye. Its coat is rough, its life-blood sticky, its 
shape neither tapered to the exquisite spire of 
the balsam nor spread with the generous wide- 
ness of the pine. Yet it strengthens the Catskill 
forest. All cannot be aerial birch ; there must be 
shadow. The spruce has its dream in spring, too, 
when it puts out green fingers to strengthen its 
hold on the world. Then, with that secured, it 
dozes off again into the grim silence of its normal 
mood. 

There are many other trees to interest the man 
who allows himself to observe the unobtruding 
forest : yellow pine, walnut, shagbark hickory, the 
cedars, aspens, and poplars, willows, and the fine- 
foliaged ironwood, alders to set the fisher wild, 
a chestnut here and there, and chestnut oaks, elms 
to make New England envious, witch-hazel, shiny 
sweet-gum, the mottled sycamore, shadbush and 
cherry, a tribe of maples, dogwood, and a rich 
underwood of laurel and a dozen shrubs. . . . 

New Yorkers have earned the name of their 
State. They are the Empire builders. With a 
double-barreled intelligence, they have decreed 
their great parks for recreation and for use. They 
have preserved their wide forests from extinc- 



THE CATSKILL PARK 309 

tion, and are now setting about applying the sci- 
entific management that utilizes — ^fire lanes, watch- 
towers, and expert lumbering, which takes only, 
the mature trees and does not leave slash to pre- 
cipitate frightful fires. As certainly as the groves 
were God's first temples, most lumbermen have 
been Huns. A desecrated woodland is only less 
wrath-compelling than shattered cathedrals and 
dissected children. But the Hunless world is com- 
ing, and with it the time when campers put out 
their fires, when fishermen throw their cigarette 
stumps in the brook, when berry-pickers take less 
heed for the morrow at the land-owners' expense, 
when all railroads use oil for fuel, and when those 
men who want to take out a grudge on the State 
will shoot their victims instead of burning up pos- 
terity's trees. 

In the Catskills one can enjoy, then, an exten- 
sive forest, covering a country partly mountain- 
ous and partly rolling, a few small lakes, a wealth 
of running water ; a place for camping, or board- 
ing with simple folk, or putting up at expensive 
hotels. Above all, one has proximity to New York. 
And this fact brings me to a delicate topic: the 
relation of Jew and Gentile — a bull that I must 
take by the horns, and that I think I can gently 
lead away and yet stay honest. Let me repeat 
two remarks: One of my friends exclaimed, 
when I mentioned my trip: ''Didn't you find 



310 THE CATSKILLS 

it overrun with Jews ? ' ' And one day, while walk- 
ing through Fleischmann's, I overheard this: 
''Wouldn't there be too many Gentiles in Hun- 
ter?" " Oh ! Not enough to hurt. ' ' 

So long as there are so many inconsiderate Jews, 
so many non-practising Christians, it will be easier 
for both to keep clannishly apart. In the Cats- 
kills there are certain sections visited exclusively 
by Jews and others exclusively by Gentiles. One 
race likes one thing and the other another. It 
seems infinitely petty to me for either to sacrifice 
the charms and satisfactions of a beautiful region 
because he might be disturbed by the other. The 
slightest amount of investigation will sufifice to find 
such sections, and will be repaid by the unique 
values of the Catskill country. 

And, now that I have come to the valedictory, I 
wonder whether I have made you realize the unique 
values of the Park without over-painting. For 
the globe-trotter who boasts of his planetizing abil- 
ity and cares for sights only as they are big, there 
is precious little in the Catskills. For the man 
who must have beetling crags, and whose enjoy- 
ment is ruined if there is another man in the same 
county, there is but little more. But for him who 
is not blind to one type of beauty simply because 
he can remember others, the Catskill Mountains 
and their surrounding hills are rich with a variety 
of wealth quite unimaginable. Before I visited 



THE CATSKILL PARK 311 

them I imagined that they were a set of mediocre 
hills infested by a sandwich-eating summer popu- 
lace. I found impressive ranges, noble cliffs, for- 
ests with game, streams with fish, and I came away 
with recollections of many cheerful firesides. In 
no other American vacation-land can one find a 
more interesting alternation of forest tramping 
and village living, a richer background of subdued 
mountain and inviting valley, a sympathetic na- 
tive population with finer historic antecedents and 
more solid qualities. If the Eternal isn't visible 
to you there, it will never be in remoter lands. 
Happiness may not be the supreme good, but it is 
a joyful desideratum. It is found only where 
there is harmony between the without and the 
within. For experiments in harmonizing, I know 
of no more convenient spot than this Land of Lit- 
tle Rivers. Certainly it overflowed with gladness 
for Brute and for me, and for its satisfactions 
we many a time thanked God and the State of 
New York. 



SOME GUIDE-BOOK ADDENDA 

Maps 

Write to the United States Geological Survey, 
Washington, D. C, for the Topographical maps, 
scale of a mile to the inch, named *'Kaaterskill," 
*' Durham," "Phoenicia," ''Slide," ''Gilboa," 
''Margaretville," "Neversink," and ''Rosen- 
dale, ' ' if you wish to cover the entire section. The 
maps cost ten cents apiece. " Kaaterskill, " 
"Phoenicia," "Slide," and " Margaretville " are 
sufficient for the heart of the Catskills. 

Climate 

Midday in June, July, August, and early Sep- 
tember is usually hot; summer nights are cool. 
Winter temperatures are from ten to thirty de- 
grees lower than in New York City. Normally 
there is sleighing all winter, and in summer the 
mountains produce harmless showers almost daily. 

Possibilities of Travel 

There are no canoe routes, and the saddle-horse 
is infrequent; but, strangely enough, the country 
lends itself excellently to the extremes, motoring 

312 



ADDENDA 813 

and walking. High speed and low mountains 
make a poor combination for after-impressions; 
but the roads are so good, and there are so many 
beautiful spots for lunch-parties, that to have a 
center from which one can adventure by day in a 
car is a fine way of getting to know the region. 
I should pick Woodstock, Shandaken, and Rox- 
bury as successive centers to motor from. 

Motor Trips 

If I were showing a friend the Catskills, I should 
following the following route : 

Kingston (about 90 miles from New York 
City) ; Ashokan Reservoir (10), turning left, pass- 
ing by Spillway and Aerator to Watson Hollow 
(15) (a beautiful road to Peekamose and down 
the Rondout Creek, but stony and narrow) ; around 
to Ashokan and West Hurley and turning left to 
Woodstock (20) (walk up to Meads and the Over- 
look. It can be driven) ; to West Saugerties (11), 
up Plaat Clove, and take in the Grand Canyon 
without fail; to Tannersville (6), view from Onti 
Ora Park, then through Stony Clove to Phoenicia 
(12) (side trip up Woodland Valley (7) ; Big In- 
jin (3) (side trip up the valley (8). Then walk 
to Winnisook Club (one hour) ; through Arkville 
to Roxbury (23) (walk uphill to Woodchuck 
Lodge) ; Roxbury to Grand Gorge (7) ; Grand 



314 THE CATSKILLS 

Gorge to Devasego Falls (4), to Prattsville (3), 
to East Windham (15) ; East Windham to Hunter 
and Haines Falls (20), to Mountain House (3); 
Haines Falls to Palenville (4) and to Catskill 
(10) ; Catskill to Kingston (22). 

This route provides for the more famous sights. 
It neglects the Westkill Notch, the beautiful Never- 
sink country, and many a charming side road 
about Jewett, Margaretville, and the outlying sec- 
tions. 

The State roads are always dependable and well 
garaged. Most of the smaller dirt roads are prac- 
ticable for cars. If your automobile is converted 
from a bird of passage to a beast of burden, with 
a tent in the tonneau, you can get still more from 
your fortnight. 

On Foot 

Routes so depend upon the season and what you 
call pleasure that there is small use in drawing 
plans. With a pack and a map, you will be as 
adaptable to desire as a dollar bill. The coun- 
try lends itself so well to walking, and there is 
such variety within small compass, that a man 
can have about what he most desires. Again, 
supposing that I have an amenable friend for a 
ten-day trip, I should do about as follows : 



ADDENDA 315 

First day. Train to West Hurley. Walk 
from there through Woodstock, Meads, 
and the Overlook to Plaat Clove, seeing 
Devil's Kitchen (14 miles) 

Second day. To Haines Falls via Clum Hill 
and down the Kaaterskill Clove, up the 
Otis to Mountain House (14 miles) 

Third day. Train to Kaaterskill Junction. 
Walk to Phoenicia through Stony Clove 
and go up Woodland Valley (14 miles) 

Fourth day. Climb Wittenberg and Cor- 
nell, going down southeast by compass 
until you strike Maltby Hollow and 
West Shokan (6 hours) 

Fifth day. Over by Peekamose Lodge and 
down the Rondout to Bull Run. By 
trail to East Branch of the Neversink at 
Denning, and over the ridge to Branch . (20 miles) 

Sixth day. Down the West Branch of 
Neversink, and by map and compass, 
passing Tunis Lake, to Big Balsam 
Lake and Mountain (12 miles) 

Seventh day. Climb Big Balsam (2 hours), 

and, going by Seager, to Arkville .... (10 miles) 

Eighth day. Train to Roxbury, and rest. 

Stroll out to Woodchuck Lodge (3 miles) 

Ninth day. From Roxbury to Grand Gorge, 
Devasego Falls, Pratts Rocks, Wind- 
ham, and East Windham (30 miles) 

Tenth day. To Cairo (10 miles) and train 
to Catskill 

Total equivalent to 150 miles 



316 THE CATSKILLS 

Anybody can soon train into a fifteen-mile day 
and never feel it. The trouble with the foregoing 
schedule, while it shows the Catskills to some ad- 
vantage, is that at each place there are enough 
beautiful things to see to spend a day or so loung- 
ing around and taking them in. It is easily the 
outline of a three-weeks' trip as properly taken. 
The Catskills have a way with them that the nov- 
elists would call intriguing — which means, I sup- 
pose, that they continually insinuate you into sit- 
uations that are unexpectedly alluring. They in- 
vite. Your wits and leg muscle must do the rest. 

Bibliography 

The written word about the Catskills is scant, 
hard to get at, and mostly uninteresting when 
reached. It is divided into the early classics, the 
exclamatory descriptions of mid-Victorian trav- 
elers, and latterday articles of information. 
Among the classics I should suggest: 

Cooper's "Pioneers" and "Pathfinder" for atmosphere. 

Irving 's "Rip" and "Diedrich Knickerbocker" for 
more atmosphere. 

Parkman for the setting. 

Bryant's "Catterskill Falls" is not particularly im- 
pressive. 

A collection of quotations from N. P. Willis, Miss Mar- 
tineau, Bayard Taylor, Thomas Cole, Park Benja- 
min, Gaylord Clarke, Tyrone Power, still to be 
found in libraries, will sate any thirst for travel 



ADDENDA 317 

description of that era, though it is not fair to put 
Bayard Taylor with the rest. He is vivid and true. 
If you must have a "guide" to this easy country, 
Baedeker is still the best. 
Mearns (in U. S. Nat. Hist. Mus. Bull.), "Note of Cats- 
kill Mammals." 
Heilprin (Amer. Geog. Soc. Bull.), "The Catskill Mts." 
Guyot, "Geology of Catskills." 

These three make the scientific aspects of the moun- 
tains very fascinating. 
Hamilton Mabie in "Backgrounds of Literature." 
A. W. Dimock's "Winter in the Catskills" from "Coun- 
try Life." 
Clifton Johnson in "St. Lawrence to Virginia" and 

"The Picturesque Hudson." 
Henry James in the ' ' New York and Hudson : A Spring 

Impression" in "North American Review." 
R. H, Vail in "Along Hudson in Stage-Coach Days," 
De Lisser 's * ' The Picturesque Catskills. ' ' 
Weed Thurlow 's ' ' Reminiscences of Catskill, ' ' 
A, E. P. Searing's "The Land of Rip Van Winkle." 
D. A. Hawkins's "Traditions of Overlook Mountains." 
I found these interesting, particularly the, first five. 
Also the State Report and accounts of the 
Ashokan Reservoir are full of scattered inter- 
est. 

This list is intentionally incomplete, many of 
the ''Guides" being the extreme of dulness. But 
the works of Burroughs fill all the gaps. He has 
but one book, "In the Catskills," which avowedly 
deals with his life country. But almost all that 
he has written deals with the Catskills. If you 



318 THE CATSKILLS 

know your Burroughs, you know the birds, the 
beasts, the geology, and the unsubstantial genius 
of the land better than if you had set painstak- 
ingly to read up all the other literature on the 
region. So I leave you in his hands. They will 
never fail you. 

The Pictures 

The more civilized we are, the more we take for 
granted. People who enjoy pictures are civilized. 
The young men who have traveled and climbed 
and exposed themselves and their plates to illumi- 
nate the foregoing pages get less credit than scene- 
painters and less reward than peanut-vendors 
(whom I suppose must come out even). Art is as 
long as it ever was, and much more expensive. 
Fortunately, it is no less enthralling, and so these 
artists of the camera probably have their own pri- 
vate satisfactions. But that makes me none the 
less desirous of acknowledging my debt to them: 
to Mr. Kriebel for the results of long study and 
enthusiasm handed over so generously; to Mr. 
Allison for his willingness to trudge with tripod 
and sit by the day with a sick perspective ; to Mr. 
Burtt for — lo ! these many things. 



INDEX 



Acknowledgments, 318 
Acra Point, lOO 
Adirondacks, 31, 43 
Arena, 297 
Arkville, 207 
Ashland, 103 
Ashokan, Mt., 266 
Ashokan Reservoir, 240 ff., 

Balsam Lake Mt., 293 
Balsam Top, 228 
Barrus, Dr. Clara, 251 
Batavia Kill, 155 
Belle Ayre, 229 
Big Hollow, 155 
Big Injin Valley, 211 flf. 
Black Dome, 155, 157 
Black Head, 155 
Bloomberg Mt., 229 
Blue Hole, Tlie, 280 
Bovina, 303 
Branch, 292 

Broadstreet Hollow, 228 
Burnt Knob, 156 
Burroughs, John, 238 flf. 
Bushkill Valley, 294 
Buttermilk Falls, 93 
Byrdcliflfe, 24 

Cats, Jacob, 43 
Catskill, 111 

Aqueduct, 269 flf. 

animals, 182 flf. 

bibliography, 316 

birds, 176, 285 

climate, 312 

fire system, 290 



Catskill — Continued 

fishing, 292 

flowers, 262, 284 

food, 66 

forest, 304 

Forest Preserve, 305 

limits defined, 45 
266 maps, 312 

motor trips, 313 

object of visiting, 42 

Park, 306 

possibilities of travel, 312 

towns, 146 
Chichester, 130 
Claryville, 285 
Chun Hill, 57 
Cole, Thomas, 155 
"Contemporary Verse," 256 
Cooper's Lake, 19 
Cornell Mt., 228 

Deer Shanty Brook, 288 
Devasego Falls, 206 
Devil's Kitchen, 40 
Dimock, House of, 281 
Double Top, 229 
Dougherty Brook, 234 
Driscoll, Miss Louise, 256 
Druid Rocks, 116 

Eager, M. M., 299 
Eagle Mt., 229 
East Ashland, 150 
P:astkill, 148 
Echo Lake, 33 
Edgewood, 133 
Elfin Pass, 116 
319 



320 



INDEX 



Elka Park, 58 
Elm Kidge, 156 
Equipment, 134 flf. 
Esopus, 211 
Eureka, 285 

Fairy Spring, 116 
Fall Brook, 293 
Faun's Leap, 103 
Fire stations, 290 
Fieischmann's, 310 
Fly Brook, 207 

Gilboa, 273 
Ginseng, Mt., 168 
Graham, 229 
(Jrand Canyon, 40 
Grand Gorge, 206 
Grand View, 300 

Haines' Falls, 204 
Halcott, 229 
Hall, Dr. E. H., 269 
Harrison, Birge, 16, 25 
Hawkeye, 115 
Hayden, Mt., 168 
Hemlock, Mt., 229 
High Peak, 76 
Hillyer's Ravine, 103 
Hollow Tree Ravine, 132 
Hudson Valley, 70 
Hunter Mt., 120 
Huntersfield, 171 
Hussey's Hill, 228 

Indian Head, 22, 55 
Irving, 96 ff. 

Jewett, 149 

Kaaterskill Clove, 91 
Kaaterskill Falls, 85 
Kaaterskill House, 75 
Kanape Brook. 277 
Karst, John, 277 



Kerr, 'Gene, 275 
Kingston, 5 

Lanesville, 127, 132 

Lemon Squeezer, 116 

Lexington, 148 

"Life Histories of Northern 

Mammals," 191 
Livingston Manor, 295 
Ix)ne Mt., 229 
Lost Clove, 229 
Lost Mt., 170 

Manorkill, 169 
Maps, 312 
Margaretville, 284 
Meads', 25 
Mine Hollow, 277 
Mink Hollow, 19 
Mink Mt., 228 
Mountain House View, 70 
"My Garden is a Pleasant 
Place," 256 

Nebo Mt., 168 
Neversink, 287 
North Dome, 228 

Old Man of the Mts., 228 
Olive, 246 
Oliverea, 212 
Onteora Park, 58 
Overlook, 76 
Overlook House, 26 

Pakatakan Mt., 297 

Palenville, 104 flf. 

Palenville Overlook, 87 

Panorama from Slide Mt., 227 

Pantherkill, 235 

Panther Mt., 213 

Parker Mt., 58 

Peekamoose, 277 

Phoenicia, 120 

Pme Hill, 300 



INDEX 



321 



Pisgah, 169 
Plaat Clove, 34 
Plateau Mt., 57 
Plattekill Clove, 33 
Pleasant Mt., 228 
Pratt's Pocks, 206 
Prattsville, 206 
Profile Rock, 110 

Eed Falls, 174, 206 
Rich, J. Lynn, 207 
Richmond Mt., 169 
Richtmyer Peak, 169 
Romer Mt., 130 
Rondout, The, 280 
Round Top, 188 
Roxbury, 299 

Samson Mt., 260 

Santa Cruz Ravine, 115 

Sawkill, 15 

Schoharie, 56, 147 

Seton Thompson, 191 

Shandaken, 210 

Sheepskin Indians, The, 295 

Sheridan Mt., 130 

Shokan, 246 

Slabsides, 239, 253 

Slide Mt., 222 S. 

Snyder's Hollow, 23& 

South Hollow, 277 

Spruce Top, 58 

Squirrel Inn, 100 

Stamford, 203 

State Roads, 101 

Stony Clove, 124 

Stoppel Mt., 121 

Stork, Wharton, 256 

Sugar Loaf, 55 

Sundown, 284 



Sunset Park, 100 
Sunset Rock, 100 

Table Mt., 229 

Tannery Brook, 15 

Tliunderstorms, 121 

Ticetonyk, 228 

Tobias Mt., 228 

Tongore, 244 

Tremper Mt., 130 

Tiinis Lake, 293 

Turnwood, 206 

Twilight Park, 60, 100, 115 

Twin Mt., 57 

Utsayantha Mt., 202 

Vly Mt., 227 

"Waiting," 247 
Walking, 157 
Watson Hollow, 277 
Westkill Mt., 132, 208 
Westkill Notch, 208 
West Park, 253 
West Shokan, 261 
Wetzel, Louis, 118 
White, Hervey, 19 
Whitehead, R. R., 24 
Wildcat Ravine, 115 
Willowemoc, 295 
Windham, 150 
Windham High Peak, 156 
Winnisook Club, 214 
Wittenberg, 228 
Woodchuck Lodge, 253 
Woodland Valley, 234 
Woodstock, 15flf. 

Zoar Mt., 168 



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